The land where the nags are kept used to belong to the parents of the present owner of our favourite scrapyard, and I promised him that I would drop round one morning with the deeds to the land so he could have a look through them.
The oldest was dated 1837.
After that I had a stroll round the yard to see what I could find of interest, and while nothing jumped out and grabbed my wallet, I did come across an old diesel railcar/tug with a couple of engines standing alongside.
The engines are Ruston & Hornsby 4 cylinder water cooled with separate heads. Looking through the British Diesel Engine Catalogue of 1954 I found the engine to be a 4VRH, 50bhp @ 1250rpm.
With three engines available is might be possible to get it all running again, the radiator and transmission is in place and looks fairly all together, I didn't check the gauge of the wheels so it might be a narrow-gauge version, possibly from the gravel pits locally around Wellingborough.
Other things that I noticed were a Cincinatti Millacron milling machine, probably 1960's but gone for scrap already, a pile of freshly dumped steering column shafts about 3ft long each, made out of 5/8 or 3/4 steel, highly usable for axles etc., a large pile of machine tools, probably guillotines and presses, all looking fairly fresh.
An old David Brown tractor was being loaded onto a trailer while I was there, it had been pulled out of the pile for spares probably, but at least wasn't going to finish up rusting away.
I didn't have my camera with me, but will take it along next time.
Peter
-- Peter & Rita Forbes snipped-for-privacy@easynet.co.uk Engine pages for preservation info: