Transport Ran Out Of Steam (29 April 1977)

In considering road transport past and present, we are apt to think in terms of a straight transition from genuine horsepower to the horsepower generated by internal combustion engines.  We are apt to forget the part played by the steam engine.  Not the steam engines that ran on railways, but the steam engines that ran on roads.

In general, but only in general, traps and gigs did give place directly to the small cars, three-wheelers, and motor cycle combinations.  Even wagonettes were taken over by char-a-bancs, which in turn were superseded by motor buses and motor coaches.

In the case of heavy goods, however, there was a long intermediate stage during which power was provided by steam traction engines.

Many of us can remember when traction engines were a common sight on the roads.  They travelled at only eight or nine miles an hour on the flat.  Even so, they were faster and cheaper to run than teams of heavy horses, for one engine could haul as much as two or three teams of horses and wagons and needed only one driver.  And they were not built for obsolescence; they were built to last – in the good old Victorian way.

Producers of heavy goods, including the local brick company, used them extensively until motor lorries were built capable of taking their place.  But even after that general transition, steam tractors continued to be viable and popular for particular purposes.

For instance, there was no sight more exciting to youngsters than that of a circus or fair on the move from place to place, drawn along by a series of those puffing billies, which also served to power the swings and roundabouts, with plenty of steam left over for the organs.

They had an even longer use as road rollers.  In this connection, Mrs Sands, of Bletchley (writer of a recent anti-granny-bus letter to the Gazette) once told me that her late husband was a road-rolling contractor and that often she herself drove the engine.

There were also particular spots where traction engines continued to be used long after the general introduction of heavy lorries and buses.  Like a certain hill in my home district which was much the shortest route to a neighbouring town.  It was approached on the flat by two short right-angled turns.  Then it immediately soared and continued to do so for half-a-mile or more.

It was impossible for vehicles to take a run at it and for years it defied all attempts by loaded double-decker buses to surmount.  In fact, it was not until the introduction of the well-known Leyland “Tiger” engine that a reliable bus service could be established on that route.  Even so, the driver had to be sure to get into his lowest gear while still on the flat.

Yet day after day, for the previous 25 years or more, a steam traction engine had negotiated that hill while hauling several tons of woollen cloth.  You could beat “Jumbo” – as we used to call it – up the hill at your own walking pace, but it never failed to get there.

I also recall the annual visits of a thrashing (sic) machine to our local arable farm.  It was brought by a steam tractor, which also powered it.  But they had to stay on firm ground.  Heavy tractors, with their great iron wheels, would have sunk too deeply to do the general work on the land than is done by today’s farm tractors.

Steam trams, like the one that used to run between Stony Stratford and Wolverton Works, were fairly widespread.  But they soon gave way to electric traction, and in any case were more akin to railways, since they ran on rails.

As regards the lighter kind of road transport, Sir Frank Markham, in the second volume of his History of Milton Keynes, tells how Thomas Rickett, of the Castle Foundry, Buckingham, produced a steam-driven three wheeler in the 1850s.  It was a rugged, all-iron contraption, weighing about two-and-a-half tons, and carried three passengers, one of whom did the steering and another the braking.  It also carried a stoker on the rear platform, had an average speed of ten mph and on good level roads could reach 16 mph.  But most roads were far from good in those days.

Rickett had sold only two when the then Prince of Wales asked to see one.  So in January, 1860, Rickett drove one all the way to Windsor, where it was inspected by Queen Victoria.  Orders from the nobility followed and one was driven all the way up to Scotland.  There its proud owner, the Earl of Caithness, recorded that he had travelled in it 150 miles in two days over some of the steepest roads in the land.  In 1865 Rickett built a road engine to draw a passenger carriage, but he died shortly afterwards and the foundry closed.

Rickett’s lead was followed by others.  In the 1860s, a Yorkshire firm began building four-wheeled steam cars, some specimens of which were still in use at the end of the century.

In general, however, steam cars were not a sufficient improvement on the horse carriages they were designed to replace, and finally, both fell to the advance of the petrol engine.