Vintage tractors

On the 11th June 2011 we attended the Shakey Super Pull run by the Midlands Tractor Pulling Club at the Shakespeare Country Raceway.

At the Shakey Super Pull

We had a great day, between rain show­ers, watch­ing the very loud, very fast, very pow­er­ful and very smokey trac­tors com­pet­ing in the BTPA points event — rec­om­mend­ed fun day out for next year. Dur­ing one of the breaks, I found a line of vin­tage trac­tors on dis­play to the side of the beer tent and luck­i­ly had my wide angle lens handy for some close-up shots.

In the line were sev­er­al Fordson’s, the ubiq­ui­tous and clas­sic small trac­tor of my child­hood but a Blue Ford­son stood out amongst them as it had a bright red grill on the front. I was able to get a shot just after it had rained with the dark omi­nous clouds in the back­ground which gives the Ford­son trac­tor a grit­ty indus­tri­al back­drop. Next to that was a beau­ti­ful dark red late 1940’s, Field Mar­shall. Again quite a small trac­tor but this looked more pow­er­ful than the Ford­son but it had not been restored to show­room con­di­tion and though clean was show­ing signs of wear and tear — which I pre­fer in a hard-work­ing machine any­way. The last image is of a canary yel­low Cater­pil­lar trac­tor show­ing signs of rusty dis­tress through its fad­ed paint­work. These vin­tage trac­tors looked far removed from the mon­sters that were rac­ing only a few yards away but they share a com­mon ances­try so it was good to see them at the show.

Vintage tractors gallery