Old Film

[AJ.]

I am led to believe that the film clip below of the Hornsby Chain Tractor is the earliest of a crawler tractor, it was made in 1908 in England by Hornsbys,bit grainy now and is silent with subtitles,the second part of the clip is from 1953 of the infamous Vickers VR180,its in colour and has sound,both clips have been posted before by me on other sites a few times,the second clip is of Cats racing in the 1920s
Enjoy
AJ :)
http://media.putfile.com/Machinery-95
http://media.putfile.com/KeystoneCats

[JBL]

Very interesting. On the vickers I notice that Case is using there sprocket design as part of their extended service undercarriage. Guess sometimes you have to go back to move forward?

[Deas Plant]

Hi, AJ.
Thanks for the links and welcome to HEF.

[Grader4me]

Great links..Thanks! The "Cats racing" video was out of this world :eek: I wonder how many operators/drivers never finished the race due to injury. The part that the guy got "bucked off" and jumped right back on again was hilarious. I'll bet there was some sore boys that day!:)

[DigDug]

THanks great links, i saved them. The guy driving though the barn and then it falling on him looks like he must have got hurt? thanks doug

[RonG]

Thanks AJ,I downloaded the 9 vids you originally posted on ACMOC and somebody else sent me the race one.This is precious stuff,let me thank you again for sharing it with us.I recently sent a copy of them to a dear friend in Australia so you made another man happy as well.He owned two Vickers at one time he says,a hydraulic and a cable version.He said he built the original dam on his farm with one of them.Ron G

[Steve Frazier]

The guy driving though the barn and then it falling on him looks like he must have got hurt? thanks doug

It sure looks that way. I saw the machine at the finish line though, couldn't tell if it was the same operator. They all must have had sore backs when it was over!

It's interesting to see footage from that time period, the men were always in a tie and jacket regardless of what they were doing. I see a lot of photos of truck drivers from that era and they dress like that as well.

[JDOFMEMI]

For 1953, the Vickers tractor sure looks like it was ahead of a lot of its rivals of the time. Does anyone know what happened to them?

The bogie system on the U/C looks like a pretty good ride when most all others of the day were rigid.

Notice how a lot of them in the towed scraper sequence had the tractor set up as a pusher, and could help load the unit in front of it as well. The next unit could then push that one and so on.
We are spoiled nowadays, and can learn a lot by looking at the way things were done when we had to think about it more, because the equipment was less capable, so it had to be put to use smartly to be effective.

While I like our modern convienience, in the days gone by, the operators had to perform better. Now, we let the machine ability make up for a lack of skill way too oten. I am not saying there is no skill left, but that it is not as much of a requirement.
Skill used to make up for a lack of technology, and now it is the reverse.

By the way, many thanks for posting the videos

[AJ.]

Anyone that would like a full screen version of the Vickers it can be downloaded from the host site at the link below,hosted there with it is a film promoting LeTourneau equipmernt from 1938,it shows some scrapers,blades and rooters as well as a wheel dozer and an early motor scraper,you can download both films from Rapidshare,some people have trouble getting to the download so I am posting four pictures of how to below,Rapidshare only allow one download to none subscribers every 80 mins or so.
AJ

http://rapidshare.com/files/39237300/Vickers.wmv
http://rapidshare.com/files/39236199/LeTourneau.wmv

[RonG]

I am told by my friend in Australia that besides the obvious problem of not being tough enough to work in rock etc where we work our conventional undercarriage dozers that the Vickers dozers had problems backing up a hill because the sprocket turning and track slippage would build a berm in front of the sprocket in the area where the rear bottom roller would be on a conventional track frame and you were stuck,that is not able to back up because this pile of material would have to be climbed over by the Vickers rear bogie and would inhibit any motion to the rear.He said that they also had a problem with rocks in that area for the same reason.Ron G

[Wulf]

Thanks for the films and the tips AJ :)