The Classic Machinery Network

fang wrote:Found out where the pics are I was thinking of!!

In the "100 years of clay winning machinery" by Bill Huxley. Vol 1 has a dozer much the same as the above photo, and vol 2 has a picture of the semi-mounted caper. All were made by Onions

It was Vickers Armstrong that built the Sherman tanks over here and Onions was part of the Vickers Group of companies.
They had made American designed boxes, (Le Tourneau), during the war at The Onions Works at Bilston, Staffs.
After the war they moved to Scotswood, Newcastle and went on to develop and produce their own designs which were very succesfull.
After the illfated Shervick project Onions made the boxes, winches and dozing equipment for the Vickers tractors.

Couple more interesting tank conversion pics. here.
Fred

Sherman conversion with box.

NCK 205 on Chieftain conversion and Jones KL 11-7 on a Centurian.

The top picture is a proper Sherman conversion; just lopped the turret off it and the top plates, you'd have thought they would have put some kind of operators cabin on it though

Jeremy

Jeremy Rowland wrote:The top picture is a proper Sherman conversion; just lopped the turret off it and the top plates, you'd have thought they would have put some kind of operators cabin on it though

Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,
The only cabs we had in those days came in a bag, they were called oil-skins.

Fred

FOWLER MAN wrote:

Jeremy Rowland wrote:The top picture is a proper Sherman conversion; just lopped the turret off it and the top plates, you'd have thought they would have put some kind of operators cabin on it though

Jeremy

Hi Jeremy,
The only cabs we had in those days came in a bag, they were called oil-skins.

Fred

Yes Fred in those days the last person to come under any consideration was the poor chap who had to operate the machine closely followed by the bloke who had to fix it when it went wrong.

Jeremy

the bottom picture doesnt look like sherman walking gear maybe something different or did later model shermans have different styles of tracks ???

there was heaps of tank conversions in Australia after the war the biggest problem I have been told was they were geared to high so farmers made small diameter sprockets to help slow them down to a more usable speed
none of these my pictures credit to who ever they belong to







Paul

Paul the top one looks like a Vickers Valentine although I may stand to be corrected on that one; the bottom one could be based on an extended Sherman chassis and yes there was two types of Sherman tracks the later 'Super Sherman' had wider tracks with a different style road wheels.

Jeremy

Yes the top one is a Valentine the bottom picture is a Sentinel a tank made in Australia during the war

Sentinel tank

In Australia after WW2 the things war surplus got used for in Australia Dad has told me many times about a farm near were he grew up used aeroplane wings for fences they were just hacked off and buried in the ground at least that is how he described it me

Paul

these turned up in the mail today and thought maybe of some interest

In the late 1940's, when the Saxton family relocated from Tanjil Bren and established the sawmill and town Licola, Wilbur Saxton had a problem sourcing logging machinery. His solution was to go to Seymore' buy a number of surplus ex army tanks, and drive via the back roads to Heyfield (?). where they were adapted as needed . This is one of them in action at Connors Plain. One that never got into service rusted away for years at Licola - and the local kids braved the red back spiders to play in it .One can just be seen, back left, in the second photo

all of that writing was attached to the photo's

Paul

In the 60s I was with Cat and we were on the Wraysbury reservoir site observing the LeTourneau twin bowl "electric digger" and in the distance there were some Russian built dump trucks and at least one tank derived dozer easily identifyable by its tank like undercarriage and centrally mounted cab, bur unfortuately I seem to have concetrated on taking pics of the LeTourneau and none of the dozer.