Science Museum sells treasures
What are your thoughts on the Science Museum selling off another batch of heritage tractors?
The collection is kept at the museum’s Wroughton Airfield site, near Swindon, which could be a wonderful museum for the nation, but there has not been much effort made to resolve the situation there.
The site houses some excellent machines, including early combines and a 1933 Ford BB travelling library, which features a Muir-Hill six-wheel, chain-drive conversion, as well as other interesting artefacts.
Plans for the site have come and gone over the years and it is worrying that the museum has decided to sell off yet another batch of tractors, all of which were significant types used in the UK in their day – none are so-called preservation imports. I wonder what else the museum plans to sell off from our British cultural heritage.
Four tractors were consigned to the recent Cheffins Vintage Collective on Saturday 22 October, which we have the details for. The 1929 Massey-Harris 12-20 (no.105800) was a very nice example, featuring a PTO, and sold for £4,800 (grade 2/4). A 1942 Lend-Lease Farmall A (no. 84748), with PTO and optional belt pulley, raised £1,100 in grade 2/4 condition and a big, British-used 1941 Minneapolis-Moline GTS (no. 1612365), which was typical of a Lend-Lease threshing tractor of its time and in very complete order, sold for £3,100 (grade 2/4).
A Nuffield M3, that started life as a three-wheeler, and fitted with the excellent fuel-mixing carburettor system that was the best in the world at the time, went on to sell for just £1,800 +VAT.
Clean machinery at Stratford
On Saturday 1 October, Bletsoes held a retirement sale at Stratford-upon-Avon, for John North, with a
