Murphy . . .
'Murphy' at the Kemble Rally August 2009. These photos are thanks to Bob Tutt who followed David and Murphy for some steam steering practice !
Here they are next to 'Jasmine', A & P 8241 of 1914.
Sam has steamed our Aveling & Porter 12023, 'Murphy' over the Easter holidays. He has mastered the steam steering and is quite an expert now!
She is also good for seeing over hedges.
And also controllable on slopes and bringing to a halt.
Saturday 31st January - it was cold ! but fun. And 'Murphy' performed very well getting all our stone compacted.
'Murphy' with her repainted boiler lagging and new linning - looking very smart ! More photos at the bottom of the page.
She is a rare machine being one of only a small handful in preservation. She is an 8 ton, class P. The others that survive are the small class O. Only the later models had the inverted cone boiler to ensure the tubeplate was properly submersed, an issue on earlier models. She has steam assisted steering provided by a three cylinder A & P engine on the footplate.
She was originally supplied to John Smith, Ballyfodrin Quarries, Portadown, near Craigavon, Northern Ireland in 1928, only returning to the UK in the early 1970's by the Hirst family. She passed into the ownership of Colin Knight from Southampton who rallied her in the south of England and in Holland during the early 1980's and she appeared at the Great Dorset Steam Fair in 1984.
She then was owned in Holland for a number of years before ending up in a private collection in southern Germany in 1989, where I understand she was only steamed once. She has been there ever since only returning to the UK recently.
Complete new boiler, inner firetube and outer in the early 1980's and hardly steamed since. New hydraulic test 2008 and steam test completed.
David has been refitting and repainting the lagging after the hydraulic test.
The following two photos were taken in the UK in the early 1970's. My thanks to Dave Hardiman for the photos.
The next two images show the engine clearly. It looks splendid with the full canopy.
Our 'Murphy' was originally fitted with a short length canopy.
Another Tandem Roller works photograph kindly provided by the Road Roller Association. To find out more about the RRA see the 'links' page.
A Dutch photo of engine no. 11914 in about 1953 is shown below.
