Forestry Memories

Lokomo Plough and International Tractor - Aultmore

Lokomo Plough and International Tractor - Aultmore

Date Added: 02 May 2009 Contributor: Norman Davidson Year of Photo: 1969 Picture No: 486

Photograph courtesy of Frank Calder, Enzie.

Frank Calder’s son, Colin, dwarfed in front of the International tractor used to pull the very large Lokomo plough. Not sure of the history of this machine but from its name it must have been imported to plough very deep drains or extra deep ploughing (How deep?). It did require very significant power to pull it, hence the enormous tractor. What model and weight? From the looks of the modifications on the tractor it appears that the usual mode of action could have been to: (1) reverse out from the plough with a winch rope attached, (2) forced the spikes into the ground and, (3) then winch the plough towards the hopefully stationary tractor.

I do see the rope passing under the belly of the tractor so perhaps the reversing was not necessary and if and when it lost traction when pulling by draw bar it just unhitched and ran forward and then used anchors and winch. The winch looks as though it is hydraulic (20 ton capacity?) and has one of the largest winch ropes I think I have seen in forestry (1.5 inch diam??)

It is certainly one of the most powerful and cumbersome forestry outfits that I have seen in a photograph. I would be grateful for any working descriptions of this outfit in action as well as power, weight and size of the tractor. I have seen the plough parked up at Ae Forest and gather it was not much used!!

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Groups: Forestry Areas, Forestry in Action, Northeast Scotland , Tractors Ploughs and Drainage Machines

4 Comments

I would guess the tractor was a BTD 20, also used as bulldozers by the road squad. The weight of the tractor approx 16 tons
Comment left on 08 May 2009 at 22:37 by Ronnie Legge
Thanks for your help Ronnie as I have tracked a little more information and looking more closely at the large photograph I can just see the 20 part of the tractor model number underneath what I take to be the hydraulic oil tank. Looking on the web I see that it was manufactured at the Doncaster facory and had a 6 cylinder Rolls Royce engine. Another note came to light in an article that I had scanned and inserted into the Forestry Memories web site under Picture 391 the 4th article by Andy Neustein on plough history. It it he mentions the Lokomo Plough being winched by a BTD20 tractor in the very indurated soils in the Blackisle and achieving continuous depths of 36 inches. Comment left on 12 May 2009 at 18:24 by Norman Davidson
The engine would indeed be a Rolls Royce series C Comment left on 14 August 2009 at 13:12 by Gordon Mackenzie
This was indeed an International BTD20 and the plough was designed for working in Finnish tundra. I took photos of both tractor and plough, the plough being repair welded after fighting with rock in Perthshire.I worked from Dunkeld all over Perthshire and Fife repairing FC machines from 1962 till 1970.
The operator was a big Welshman. Comment left on 01 July 2010 at 23:23 by Ian Cameron
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