Ransomes conversions

[Anonymous]

Hello!

I have seen several old posts on the old version of this forum on these machines. Does anyone have any sales brochures for the Ransomes ITW, the ITC’s as used by the water board on the filter beds, and the Whitlock WR4 and WR8?

Were the skimmers used exclusively for work on the filter beds, or did they find uses outside of the water industry?? Foundry sand processing comes to mind, but also any soil skimming work, or even broiler house manure removal??

Is anyone writing a book on the history of Ransomes MG’s, their variants, Ransomes attachments, and approved attachments. Considering the interest in these machines I’m surprised there hasn’t been one written yet.

[expeatfarmer]

Hello Andrew
As far as is known the skimmers were just used by waterboards although you would think that there would be a number of other uses, I could have used them for harvesting peat but they were very very slow travelling as they had a further reduction gear in the drive train.
ITC and ITW tractors were used in foundries particularly in the sand beds for ingot casting, they were fitted with a type of ridging plough that formed the ingot shapes. Fascinating machines and such a shame that they were ahead of their time and not marketed as well as they could have been, how long was it after the WR8 that the bobcat came along and built a world market if onlt ransomes had hung in a bit longer who knows?
Neil Jarrett keeps talking about writing a book, I wish he would he is a mine of information and has a lot of literature. Do you have a Ransomes Crawler if so you may be interested in attending the 80th anniversary of the MG tractor to be held at Tractor World Malvern 27th 28th February next year, we are hoping to have at least one of every model that Ransomes made on display.

[Anonymous]

Peat harvesting was another use that did spring to mind to me for a skimmer, but seemed a bit on the small side to me!!

Yes the WR8 did make me think of bobcats, did Whitlock ever make a prototype mini dinkum digger to put on a Ransomes?

A lot of pics and info seems to be on the net about the agricultural machines but there doesn’t seem to be a lot of info or pics on the industrial versions.

Not at the moment, I have owned a couple in the past, and still have a TS42A plough, so if ones comes along at the right time/price I think I could be tempted!!!

I think even a book compiled from literature on these machines would make just as interesting reading as a proper history on them would

[expeatfarmer]

It will be interesting to see what literature come out of the “Reading Hoard” maybe a start for your book.

[Anonymous]

I think there are people far more knowledgable than me about these machines.

[Author]

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