Marcle Steam Rally 2017
Working Steam

This is one of a series of pages which I have uploaded to illustrate facets of steam rallies we have attended in the UK. Such events occur all over the country in the summer months, they are easily found by using your favourite search engine and may have anything between a handful of steam engines and hundreds (as at the Great Dorset Steam Fair which could probably be fairly described as having an excess of riches). Click here for the Marcle index and click here for the overall 2017 index.

Happiness is ploughing in public with your own matching pair of Fowler BB1s for the first time.

One of the joys of Marcle is the working demonstrations, this year was no exception although they took longer than usual to set up with difficult ground conditions. For me the main attraction was the chance to see Fowlers 15332 and 15333 working together. By the time they would have restarted after lunch, I had long left, having the use of a hire car, I played safe as further rain was threatening.

Steam Ploughing

Fowlers 15332 and 15333 were ploughing as is normal here, using a Fowler balance plough, Fowler 15183 would have taken a share of the duties later. Unfortunately, almost as soon as the sun came out the crews declared it was time for lunch!

Steam Sawing

Fowler 14950 was being prepared for this. Since the engine had been borrowed from the ploughers (despite the winch it's not a ploughing engine), the driver also then vanished for lunch!

Threshing

Barrows and Carmichael portable (316 ca 1865) was working on a thresher albeit at the worst possible time of day for photographing it.

Mole Ploughing

Yes, I know it's not steam, but mole ploughing (used to insert a pipe or cable) was new to me, if it was demonstrated at Crockey Hill in September 2016, I was looking the other way at the time. While I was told at Marcle that it was thought to be of Miles origin, Dick Eastwood tells me it as actually from Fraser & Fraser.