LETTER OF THE MONTH
POSITIVELY ANTIQUATED
I thought your readers would be interested in this pic. It was taken at Middlewick Farm, Southminster Marshes, Essex around about 1960. The farm buildings can be observed in the background.
The machine is a Howard Mark 2 land drainage trencher. As you can see, the power unit is an E27N Fordson Major with a Perkins P6 engine, genuine Rotaped tracks and would have had a reduction gearbox all madefrom Ongar Essex. The driver, I think, is Michael Burling who, as well as operating the trench grading with his sight rail, is feeding in the foot-long, three-inch land drain pipes you can see on the ground in front of him as he proceeds. As you can imagine, the forward speed of travel was very slow, and he didn’t have to run to keep up!
