So, You Found a Foden Steam Lorry in a Field. What Next?

So, You Found A Foden Steam Lorry In A Field. What Next? | Hackaday

It’s quite likely that many readers will have harbored dreams of owning, or at least driving, a steam engine of some kind. [James Hervey-Bathurst] was lucky enough to do so in a time when it was still possible to find scrap steam-powered machinery for restoration, and at the recent Electromagnetic Field event in the UK he took the time to describe his journey from finding an abandoned steam lorry in a Buckinghamshire field in 1975, to a few years later, taking it to the road.

The talk starts with the story of its retrieval, then the long process of rebuilding, and finally its first run. He’s the owner of Eastnor Castle, the ancestral pile that serves as venue for EMF Camp, so we’re guessing that having somewhere spacious for such a project must have helped. Along the way, we get a comprehensive run through the workings of a 1920s steam vehicle, from its double-expansion compound engine to its three-speed gearbox, stopping for small details like its injectors, and a curious exhaust steam heater designed to reduce the clouds of visible steam.

Most of us will never get the chance to take the wheel of a Foden such as this one, but at least we’ve had a chance for a closer look thanks to EMF. The full video is below the break, meanwhile if you’d like more on steam injectors we have you covered.

3 thoughts on “So, You Found A Foden Steam Lorry In A Field. What Next?”

"He’s the owner of Eastnor Castle…"

When money is no object, anything can be restored.

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People who complain about other being rich are usually too ignorant to get rich themselfs. I went to university, got a degree in CS and started working as a programmer because I wanted to buy myself an FSO Polonez, restore it and turn it into the car I alwayes wanted to have as a child. You just have to use imagination and everything is possible.

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I’ve read reports of the long past about steam explosions when the tank went, and the results of that, and it makes me specifically NOT want to restore any steam device, of unknown metallurgical quality.

Not that I have the capability of doing such restoration, but you get the point I think.

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So, You Found a Foden Steam Lorry in a Field. What Next?

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