Inchgreen Backhoe Loader

[sorbie]

My son stumbled across Steelfab's short film of the Inchgreen at the Kelvin Hall Exhibition while Googling the Internet and gave me the link to it as he reckoned it might interest me. He reckoned correctly.
I was technical manager of Inchgreen while we were developing the IG-5 and later became general manager and director of the company. I have unearthed a little background information about the Inchgreen company and already passed it to Steelfab.
I am trying to place you Hamish in what I remember of the company after all these years. Are you the service engineer who also did conjuring tricks, was a member of the magic circle and who once wrote off a company car on the old A66 road?

Since this site still doesn't yet have a colour photo of an IG-5, I have scanned a couple of old transparencies of mine to let anyone who is interested see what the old girl looked like.[img][IMG]http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9420/ig5014.th.jpg[/img]
[url=http://img607.imageshack.us/i/ig5013.jpg/]
URL of the original image: http://img607.imageshack.us/img607/9607/ig5013.th.jpg[/url][/img]

[BulldozerD11]

My son stumbled across Steelfab's short film of the Inchgreen at the Kelvin Hall Exhibition while Googling the Internet and gave me the link to it as he reckoned it might interest me. He reckoned correctly.
I was technical manager of Inchgreen while we were developing the IG-5 and later became general manager and director of the company. I have unearthed a little background information about the Inchgreen company and already passed it to Steelfab.
I am trying to place you Hamish in what I remember of the company after all these years. Are you the service engineer who also did conjuring tricks, was a member of the magic circle and who once wrote off a company car on the old A66 road?

Since this site still doesn't yet have a colour photo of an IG-5, I have scanned a couple of old transparencies of mine to let anyone who is interested see what the old girl looked like.[img][IMG]http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9420/ig5014.th.jpg[/img]
[/img]

Welcome to CMN Sorbie

Very Interesting photos to me as a User recently uploaded some to the Tractor Wiki site of a surviving example thats o be restored.

But the roof looked strange and i wondered if it was original but your photos shows it the same it must be




see more photos at http://tractors.wikia.com/wiki/Inchgreen were a pottered history has been created from info collected by several people on here and other sites.

Dave

[sorbie]

Hi Dave,

Yes that's an original cab in your photo. Designed by the engineers at Inchgreen but manufactured for us by Scottish Aviation at Prestwick (who happened to be rather short of aircraft work at the time).

[BulldozerD11]

Hi Dave,

Yes that's an original cab in your photo. Designed by the engineers at Inchgreen but manufactured for us by Scottish Aviation at Prestwick (who happened to be rather short of aircraft work at the time).

Thanks Jamie

They were on of several scotish firms who buildt cabs for tractors as most tractor manufacturers did offer their own cabs till after the mid 1970s when crash/rollbar rules came in, and a lot were still supplied by outside contractors, like Alexander Duncan to Massey Ferrguson.

Do you have any idea of numbers built of each model ?

Also can you tell use about other component suppliers / variants of inchgreen models made ?

Dave

[nosneb]

My son stumbled across Steelfab's short film of the Inchgreen at the Kelvin Hall Exhibition while Googling the Internet and gave me the link to it as he reckoned it might interest me. He reckoned correctly.
I was technical manager of Inchgreen while we were developing the IG-5 and later became general manager and director of the company. I have unearthed a little background information about the Inchgreen company and already passed it to Steelfab.
I am trying to place you Hamish in what I remember of the company after all these years. Are you the service engineer who also did conjuring tricks, was a member of the magic circle and who once wrote off a company car on the old A66 road?

Since this site still doesn't yet have a colour photo of an IG-5, I have scanned a couple of old transparencies of mine to let anyone who is interested see what the old girl looked like.[img][IMG]http://img9.imageshack.us/img9/9420/ig5014.th.jpg[/img]
[/img]

Hello, in those days you were Mr Allan, I remember the Gold Zodiac. Fortunately I was not the guy who wrote off the company car that honour fell to McIntyre, I forget his first name. He had an illness picked up in the jungle during the war which meant that he fell asleep without warning, as testified by many plant managers and operators who had been in a car with him when he nodded off. Elf & Safety wuold'nt like that !
I was the youngest of the department and was a motor cyclist in those days.
I had a contact from Jim McIndoe, he went to work for International Twin Disc and ended up in the US of A. Now retired to Florida.
I shot the short bit of film in the Kelvin hall was it 1965.
Luckily I survived all the turmoil which enveloped Inchgreen, Cowal, Fergusons etc and ended back in Kincaids where I had served my apprenticeship. Was again lucky enough to survive all the rationalisations and redundancies in British Shipbuilders and finished my working days with the surviving company which bought Kincaids
Nice to hear from someone else who was involved with the IGs
Hamishj

[sorbie]

One or two comments on earlier posts.

First the Inchgreen badge; this was a modification of the John Swire Group house emblem which you can still see on Cathay Pacific Airways airliners. I think it originated as the house flag of the China Navigation Company shipping line.

Second, for Dave, production numbers. I haven't kept any records from these days and after nearly half a century I can't really give you any figures. Suffice it to say the total ran only to three figures, but how far into the hundreds it went, I really cannot now say. Maybe one of the other ex-Inchgreeners has a better idea than me. Almost all of these were IG-5s, but we did design an IG-6 based on the newer Ford 5000 tractor unit which I think did get to at least the prototype stage. And we did a few 'one-offs' such as the loading shovels that were designed to shovel bulk sugar in Tate and Lyle's sheds in the Greenock docks.

Thirdly, thanks for your input too Hamish. You remember my Zodiac but I'm afraid I don't remember your motor bike. Glad you found yourself a local berth at Kincaids after all the Cloch Valves/Scotts/Lithgows nonsense. Good to know about Jim McIndoe too; retirement in Florida sounds nice! Do you happen to know what became of Gibby Moore? He was ex-Kincaids too, wasn't he? And sorry I confused you with the rather more mature Mr McIntyre (like you, his forename escapes me now). Thanks for the Kelvin Hall film too. We took some photos there one evening when, after a pop concert in the arena some of the artists visited the Inchgreen stand. One wee lassie with a miniskirt on climbed into the cab and we got some quite leggy photos of her at the controls. About a year later I realised who she was after she had become famous, but unfortunately nobody at Inchgreen could find negatives or prints of these photos anywhere. Maybe just as well, because I don't suppose Lulu would have let us use them for publicity anyway!

After I parted company with Inchgreen I spent a while on the north of the Clyde (Clydebank then Dumbarton) then returned to run John Wallace Engineering in the old torpedo factory, but after it closed I exported myself and worked abroad (in Belgium) for 20 years until I retired.

I have unearthed a couple of old magazines with articles about Inchgreen and if I find time, I'll attach scans of these here next week for anyone who wants to extend his knowledge about these old machines.

[BulldozerD11]

One or two comments on earlier posts.

First the Inchgreen badge; this was a modification of the John Swire Group house emblem which you can still see on Cathay Pacific Airways airliners. I think it originated as the house flag of the China Navigation Company shipping line.

Second, for Dave, production numbers. I haven't kept any records from these days and after nearly half a century I can't really give you any figures. Suffice it to say the total ran on;y to three figures, but how far into the hundreds it went, I really cannot now say. Maybe one of the other ex-Inchgreeners has a better idea than me. Almost all of these were IG-5s, but we did design an IG-6 based on the newer Ford 5000 tractor unit which I think did get to at least the prototype stage. And we did a few 'one-offs' such as the loading shovels that were designed to shovel bulk sugar in Tate and Lyle's sheds in the Greenock docks.

Thirdly, thanks for your input too Hamish. You remember my Zodiac but I'm afraid I don't remember your motor bike. Glad you found yourself a local berth at Kincaids after all the Cloch Valves/Scotts/Lithgows nonsense. Good to know about Jim McIndoe too; retirement in Florida sounds nice! Do you happen to know what became of Gibby Moore? He was ex-Kincaids too, wasn't he? And sorry I confused you with the rather more mature Mr McIntyre (like you, his forename escapes me now). Thanks for the Kelvin Hall film too. We took some photos there one evening when, after a pop concert in the arena some of the artists visited the Inchgreen stand. One wee lassie with a miniskirt on climbed into the cab and we got some quite leggy photos of her at the controls. About a year later I realised who she was after she had become famous, but unfortunately nobody at Inchgreen could find negatives or prints of these photos anywhere. Maybe just as well, because I don't suppose Lulu would have let us use them for publicity anyway!

After I parted company with Inchgreen I spent a while on the north of the Clyde (Clydebank then Dumbarton) then returned to run John Wallace Engineering in the old torpedo factory, but after it closed I exported myself and worked abroad (in Belgium) for 20 years until I retired.

I have unearthed a couple of old magazines with articles about Inchgreen and if I find time, I'll attach scans of these here next week for anyone who wants to extend his knowledge about these old machines.

Thanks for the update James - The more snippets of info that can be picesed together about them the better, so they dont get totally forgotten.

Loads of the history about the smaller divisions and diversification projects and less famous parts of a lot of British engineering firms are in danger disappearing totally as more ad more mergers and acquisitions and banking failures destroy what bits survive of British engineering and the many people involved die off and all the records vanish.

Be great if you can scan any articles you have on Inchgreen. People are also interested in other material related to the old engineering companies such as advertising brochures and publicity material and press reports.

Have a look at www.gracesguide.co.uk for pre 1960 British engineering history were there are some great examples of old publications if your interested in engineering history. (Some of the histories are a bit jumbled/not joined up due to all the name changes etc).

Dave

[IBH]

In the November 2004 issue of Classic Plant & Machinery there is a small photo of an Inchgreen backhoe loader on page 18.

[sorbie]

I promised on 30th January to upload scans of two articles about Inchgreens and have tried several times to do so, but each time the site 'timed out' before the upload was complete. Is there a limit on this forum concerning the size of attachments? Or some secret I haven't discovered about how to upload stuff like that here??

[Holger]

Hello James,

thank you for trying to upload those scans.
How large are the files?
The upload limit in terms of filesize are very large, so that should not be a problem.
If the problem presists, please send the scans to webmaster@classicmachinery.net and I will try to upload them.

Best regards