Old Warden Steam Rally 2024
Working Steam

This is one of a series of pages which I have uploaded to illustrate facets of steam rallies we have attended in the UK. Such events occur all over the country in the summer months, they are easily found by using your favourite search engine and may have anything between a handful of steam engines and hundreds (as at the Great Dorset Steam Fair which could probably be fairly described as having an excess of riches). Click here for the Old Warden index and click here for the overall 2024 index.

One thing I really like about this rally is that the working area is 'in your face' when you first arrive. Of course, at 09.00 on Saturday, this meant a long walk back for a proper look once things had got going. I assume Marshall 36258 did some threshing but I wasn't present when it did.

Foster portable 13190 lives not far from us in the Hereford area but this was the first time I had seen it. It was the first time I had seen one of these in the UK, but we used to see them in rice mills in Burma where they tended to have been separated into boiler and engine.

Weeting's Burrell crane engine 3695 was kept busy:

Burrell 3935 was a new engine for mw, that was a challenging position to photograph.

As a close up, it was less than ideal, but just about acceptable. 

It was the first time that I had seen this engine, fortunately, when its shift was over it went off and did a few circuits. Burrell 3420 also did a shift on this saw bench.

Ruston and Hornsby 115100, on the other hand, with its friends is a stalwart of the rally scene.

There are so many of them that it's a wonder they don't keep bumping into each other.

Milling and stone crushing seemed to be using tractors. Weeting it was not, but it was a considerable step up from 2018.