Engine Punk

Although looking dignified in black, many Mk1 Wolseley 1500s were spectacularly two-tone. Their lines seem to suit that sort of paint job Wolseley - ah! the name - it sounds to me like a slightly sozzled English bank manager, Captain Mainwaring's disreputable brother. Wolseley could be an adjective for wobbly wooziness whereas it is really a name synonomous with quality motoring and advanced aero-engine manufacture. Fought over by the William Morris and Herbert Austin for its expertise in overhead camshaft designs, the marque of Wolseley became a luxury Morris as British motor manufacturers emulated the American big 3 in its marketing structure as well as its mass production techniques. Wolseley subsequently  suffered the indignity of badge engineering under BMC but survived as a make of motor car until 1975. And straight from the stranger than fiction department, woolly old Wolseley has its origins in sheep shearing equipment. There used to be one of these machines preserv...

On the left a Foden steam tractor. On the right a Tasker Little Giant steam tractor. Both different approaches to what a steam tractor for the road should look like. There were many rumours about this year's show, largely to do with the introduction of a £5 entry fee for cars, motorbikes and tractors. Many of my friends refused to go, saying that this move would kill the goose that laid the golden egg and that people were just getting greedy when times were harder than ever. In the fortnight before the show, idle barbie-side talk (the summer equivalent of idle fireside talk) was that support was so poor cancellation was being discussed. I thought I'd go along anyway and to be honest you wouldn't have known there'd been all these problems, although there didn't seem to be quite so much there. It's a wonderful setting and I really hope no geese are killed and we can all make golden omelettes. Boconnoc featured tractor pulling again this year. Those beer ...

Eventually I have established that the server for my website was changed by my internet provider and when the old address was switched off my pictures disappeared some time after the change over. Older posts were affected and it took me some time to notice this. A couple of years ago the link from my Anarchadia website connected to the old server and for a while it appeared that Engine Punk wasn't being updated. Regular readers may remember their favourites showing my impressions of the Lincoln Vintage Vehicle Society as the most recent blog entry. So it wasn't a Blogger problem as such.It was me changing IT horses in mid-stream. No backup is now available because all the change occurred 2009, so it's a case of re-loading the images but the blog needs a bit of weed (still damn and blast tho). Work is going on in the background to restore the old posts in bite sized chunks, like when I'm waiting for the immersion heater to boil the bath water after some intensi...