Shrewsbury Steam Gala ready to roll into town.

Shropshire Star

We catch up with the organisers of the popular Steam event in Shrewsbury to find out more.

Transcript

00:00Ed Goddard hello sir how are you I'm good thank you mate it's that time of year yeah

00:06it's an annual steam rally time again well dare I say it the forecast is looking alright isn't it

00:11looking okay yeah it's been very dry but it looks like we're going to get away with it hopefully

00:19cool and what's this bit of kit behind you then that we've got here tell us the story of this one

00:23this is my 1903 boral showman's engine and it was actually built back in 1903 as what they call a

00:32road locomotive and it worked down in sort of the Basingstoke Windsor area and it actually worked

00:39on the Windsor estate for quite a lot of its early life so what would it been doing then on that site

00:44what graft would it have been doing what purpose it was basically they used it for logging so they

00:49would be carting timber off the estate and it's fitted with a winch and yeah they would winch

00:55the logs up onto the trailer and then take the trailer to the sawmill yeah but then after that

01:00it sort of came as time moved on in the 1930s it was converted into what it is today a showman's

01:07engine which is they added the dynamo on the front which powered the rides and then it worked for

01:14Stokes's which is what's the name on the canopy who were showmans in the Basingstoke area

01:18going from fair to fair in the south and towing the fair between between each each town and then

01:25they would set up and then they used the engine to power the rides whilst it was there so has it

01:30always been in good condition or was there a point where this particular engine was kind of you know

01:34almost on the scrappy well I think it's fair they were all on the scrappy I mean this engine worked

01:40in the fair for a while then through the war it was used for pulling down and bomb damaged buildings

01:45in London so they used to literally tie the winch rope through the buildings and pull them down when

01:49they were unsafe but then after that it was sort of semi-retired and a chap called David Hurst bought

01:56it and he restored it used it for a while and then got some I don't know where you got bored of it but

02:02it sat literally sat in his backyard for about 25 30 years under a sheet and sort of deteriorated a

02:07bit then and then a guy called Len Crane bought it in um in Wolverhampton and Len did an awful lot

02:13of work to it to restore it back to its sort of former guys and then I was lucky to purchase it off

02:19of Len's widow about five years ago so and then since then we've done a huge amount of work on it

02:25and bringing it back to a1 condition well there's a lot of work going on today and there's a lot of

02:30a lot of polishing a lot of auto glim gets used getting one of these ready for a show yeah yeah yeah well

02:35it is a labor of love to be fair and I'm very lucky I've got a very good team that helped me out and

02:41it does take a lot of polishing and my wife at home sometimes wonders why I'm not so good in the house

02:46but I'm obviously worn out from doing the steam engine of course yeah that's it that's we'll go

02:51with that story so this is getting ready for the show fill us in on when and where the show is and

02:56what the show is all about really yeah well the show the show is at Onslow Park which is on just out

03:01on the Welsh Bull Road as you come out of Rosebury it's on Sunday and Monday this bank holiday weekend

03:06coming and we've got over a thousand exhibits there from shire horses through to old tractors

03:13and then we've got about a hundred steam engines old motorbikes and craft displays trade stands

03:19everything for everybody in the family really what is it about this kind of vehicle that just

03:24the love of them just endures do you think it harks back to a world where we could see how things

03:30worked we could see cogs moving whereas these days we pick up our phone and we pick up gadgets

03:34we haven't got a clue how they work is it a bit of that do you think I think it's just harking back

03:53to days when things were sort of proper if that's the proper best way of describing it not throw away

03:57and then it's just they were clever back in those days and then you know they obviously time moves

04:02on but if you look back at how these were built they were built to last and that's why they're still

04:07here today

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