It’s not always easy to find a Christmas present that suits in one way or another. Mike Neale takes a look at a number of new books that have shown up on the Old Glory radar that are available this Christmas. Many of them can be found in many good bookshops, and from Flâneur Automotive Literature & Automobilia, Freshwater, Isle of Wight (https://flaneur.co.uk/)
HAMM - More than 100 years of road rollers from Tirschenreuth
By Road Roller Association member Alfred Meyer. German version published in 2021 by Podszun - Motorbüchen Gmbh (www.podszun-verlag.de) An English language version is now available.
A4, hard covers. 533 photos plus 85 ‘catalogue page’ illustrations. ISBN 978-3-7516-1050-6. Price 39.90 Euros plus €16.61 shipping to UK.
The German firm of Hamm in Bavaria was established there in 1896 and has been producing motor rollers since 1911. Perhaps, surprisingly, it never made a steam roller but continued in production making probably hundreds of different types of rollers to satisfy an ever-growing world-wide demand for them.
From 2017, the firm became a member of the global John Deere ‘family’ but they still turn out their products in their own famous orange livery. At their premises in 2014 a circuit was built to test what might be considered to be the ultimate in rollers - an autonomous version which is driver-less and can therefore operate around the clock without supervision and which is consequently extremely cost-effective.
