Plough Team in Rannoch Forest
The photographs are via Walter Grant from Sandy Milne, former Forestry Commission Mechanic whose Land Rover is seen in the left foreground. Sandy managed to drive over 100,000 miles in SMV610F which was no mean feat as a great deal of that would have been over single track public and gravel forest roads.
The two ploughing tractors behind were driven by Jim Sangster and Dick Warrier. They look new or even very new the one on the left with possible registration SMV607F and the other, the newest looking with paint still on the track plates, has an unreadable number plate.
These look like normal TM 70 Track Marshall tractors but the one on the left has a different air intake system. Perhaps someone will correct or confirm?
The cable winches may be PTO driven but certainly the winch on the right does have pipe work to and from it indicating hydraulic drive. Mechanical winches usually had a long lever running up to the rear window to enable the driver to activate the PTO drive mechanisms.
Sandy does mention new tractor has light alloy plates?
The plough looks like a traditional single furrow Cuthbertson but the head is larger and may be designed for cross draining. It certainly seems large for the traditional plough frame but perhaps was the system before the larger Humpy frame was introduced.
Any comments and corrections welcome.
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Groups: Forestry Areas, Other Vehicles and Machines, Tractors Ploughs and Drainage Machines
"The photos were very welcome; dated from 1969, I had only one year left with the F.C., but remembered the machines. In the Rannoch photo: the left hand Track Marshall was a TM70 with 6 cylinder engine and appears to have a rear mounted winch. The other brand new Track Marshall was a TM 55 with a 4 cylinder engine. I remember being sent to Bridge of Gaur to meet this machine off the loader.
The thinking with this lighter machine was that it would not need wide tracks, it had a de-bogging boughton winch, front mounted with hydraulic motor drive. The machine did not have alloy plates, simply standard 18 or 20 inch steel plates.
If you look at the original Rannoch photo you will notice that the TM 55 had a much narrower cab and the air intake was on the right hand side of the machine. It does not appear to have a rear mounted winch, only a valve feeding hydraulic oil to the ram to be noted on the twin wheeled Parkgate plough frame.
I recruited Dick Warrier from Andrew Allan some years before - he was a steady operator". Comment left on 03 January 2022 at 09:11 by Norman Davidson (Website Curator)