steam rollers

[bikerider]

My wife and I went out for our regular walk today and we came to a short access path to wood and fields beyond.
The mud path is now dried out but heavily rutted from more activity than usual over the past year. She commented
it's a pity it wasn't steam rollered before it fully dried out.
Now, I always call them steam rollers as well and was trying to recall my childhood in the fifties. I am sure they were
redundant then. Do you still or ever did call them steam rollers?

[Jdsk]

Yes, "steamrollers" in the fifties, but I'm not sure when the engines changed... hold on... found it... some were used in the construction of the M1!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steamroller#Usage

My great-uncle was crippled by one somewhere in the Potteries.

Now where does this thread ago... a well-known Boltonian or memories of Mamods? : - )

Jonathan

[Paulatic]

As a child, yes, they were a steam roller. Now though I’d refer to it as as a road roller, a roller, or sometimes they are just a whacker plate.

[peetee]

Yes, I call them steam rollers even though the original term referred to traction engines with a cylinder on the front axle rather than wheels.
And speaking of traction engines, here is a photo of an incident at the end of our road about 100 years ago.

[VinceLedge]

Yep, still call them that, although never seen a steam one actually rolling anything!

[Mick F]

I know people who own and run steam rollers and traction engines.
Met someone in Tavistock a few years ago with a double wheel steam roller. That is, one wheel (steering) at the front, and two rollers at the back .......... or was it the other way round? I forget!

Either way, it was used extensively rolling the M1 ................. which brings me to the fact that the M6 as the Preston bypass was the first motorway in England, not the M1.

[francovendee]

In my childhood they were powered by steam and I still refer to them as steam rollers.
I also refer to our vacuum cleaner as the hoover although it's made by Vax.

[Oldjohnw]

I remember steam rollers and still call them that. My daughter, who has never seen one, calls them that. Perhaps she is thinking of a steam iron.

Apparently, when children draw a train, they draw a steam train. When people use baby language and refer to a train they say “choo-choo”.

[Jdsk]

: - )

Jonathan

[KTHSullivan]

An old friend of mine went through a phase of collecting agricultural machinery to include some traction engines. As he grew older and his attention waned and he gave it all up. He became an ex-tractor fan...............I'll get my coat.

[LollyKat]

In my childhood we all called them steam rollers (I still do) even though they were no longer powered by steam. I was quite puzzled, and disappointed when I saw one - we still had real steam trains.

[merseymouth]

Afternoon all, My favourite variant of the steam genre must be models such as the Sentinal Steam Lorry, a number of which were still plying their trade at the Port of Liverpool in the 1960's. As I worked as an office junior in road haulage I had regular sight of them.
But almost as common then was the carters who still used real horse power! They may well have been only able to pull a 4 ton load, but the lorry that could haul 10 tons would be sitting most of the day for a single load of cotton, whilst the cart was called to the head of the queue to get three loads a day!
Come the 70's the horse and Sentinal had had their day, though the Scammell Scarab, mechanical horse successor, was still rolling on.
Climbing over Shap in an open cab chassis unit from Leyland's was a hard life. MM

[Stradageek]

My favourite (slightly relevant) tale comes from an oral history of East Kent at around the turn of the last century. In it a farm hand bemoans the introduction of horses for ploughing, saying they were hard work, what with all the grooming and fettling and feeding. He maintains that oxen were much easier, you just turned them into a field to graze at the end of the day. He thought the blame lay with "everyone wanting to do everything so fast these days".

[LollyKat]

Love it!

[thirdcrank]

Fowler's, whose works were on Leathley Road in Hunslet, Leeds, built steam rollers and several are pictured here on the Leodis archive.

https://www.leodis.net/SearchResults/c3RlYW0gcm9sbGVy/