Engine Punk

Bereaved twin  Hero  in between pulls of the plough My mother was a twin to my Auntie Margaret. They might have been identical twins although I could always tell them apart.  They identified with ploughing engines built in pairs. One was built to winch from the left and the other winched from the right. With a friendly amount of whistling between the two, they would shuffle forward gradually along the field, speeding the plough between them. Hero pulls from the right hand side with its secondhand Fowler cable drum Ploughing was heavy work so the boilers were big and the cylinders of the engine equally massive. Their wheels were wider than other engines to spread their weight over soft ground. Overall, ploughing engines had a greater physical presence compared to other traction engines. My mother and aunt often said it was the plainness of these huge engines appealed. I don't think they personally identified with that plainness. It was the twinship they liked and the mass...