H.J. Pugh Auction (21st June, 2025)

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 overall index for 2025.

H.J.Pugh in Ledbury not far from home is a major auctioneer which occasionally includes a road engine or two in their regular auctions including those at Welland and Much Marcle steam rallies. Click here for one such in 2023. On this occasion attending the actual sale was out of the question as it clashed with Appleford 75.

The engine concerned might well have been described as a 'novelty item', one of only three Frick engines in the UK; as the 'plate' on the engine records, it is 10937, it also refers to a 1880 pat(ent). The TER says it was imported from Chile in 2005 and the auctioneer claims from America, they also state that it dates from 1904. I have included rather more pictures than normal as it is such a 'rare bird'. It looks very similar to the Geiser I recorded at Heddington in 2017.  The two companies operated out of Waynesboro, Pa and as the 'Steam Tractor Encyclopedia' records, their two histories are intertwined, together with the Landis brothers.