Track Marshall is a brand name that was applied to a range of Crawler tractors, that followed on from the Fowler Range built for Marshall's of Gainsborough. The Brand had several owners over the years. Eventually going out of business in the 1990s, due to the decline in use of crawler tractors, as higher powered modern wheeled tractors took off.
History
A Track-Marshall 55 with an earlier Fowler VF behind, at the Belvoir Castle show in 2007
The Track-Marshall crawler tractor which was produced by John Fowler & Co. of Leeds was a tracked version of the Field Marshall tractor built by Marshalls of Gainsborough. The first ones being the VF and the VFA versions. Fowlers having like Marshalls being a builder of Steam machinery, including Ploughing Engines.
Fowler History
- Main article: Fowler
Fowler Crawler tractor at Bromyard show 2008
Fowler's of Leeds was controlled by the supply ministry during the war due to an industrial dispute that started in Dec 1940. They built no crawlers during the war, building tanks and generators for the ministry. By 1945 they were designing a new range the FD line and started production of the FD2's. they built a few FD2's and about 700 FD3's in 18 months. A new model the FD1 was in development, and the FD4 was introduced and 14 built when Fowlers was sold to T.W Ward owners of Marshall of Gainsborough, by the then parent company Rotary Hoes. The Marshall then replaced the Fowler FD line with their VF range of crawlers based on the Field Marshall tractor engine.
Fowlers bought the Ministry commissioned casting factory at Sprotborough built to produce Tracks for tanks in the war. Cast tracks being cheaper to produces as less machining is required. The VF being built till 1957.
Track Marshall
A Track-Marshall 55 at Hollcot steam fair 2008
A Track-Marshall 70 at the Belvoir Castle show 2007
An agricultural Track-Marshall 55 in unrestored condition at Driffield Steam rally 2008
In 1956 the first Track Marshall model was introduced. Followed by the Challenger 3, then the challenger 33
In 1970 the Bristol Tractors Ltd was taken over, and the operation moved from Sough Bridge Mill, Earby in the former West Riding of Yorkshire, now part of Lancashire, to the Marshall factory at Gainsborough. The tractor line was discontinued but the Taurus Loading shovel was re branded as the TM 1100, retaining the 3-Cylinder Perkins engine.
In 1970 an operation was started to build (assemble CKD kits) of Track Marshall machines in India by The Britannia Engineering Co. Ltd of Tigarth West Bengal.[1] In 1974 The Fowler "Steam Plough Works" in Leeds closed with production transferred to Gainsborough, Lincolnshire.
Then in 1975 T.W.Wards sold the company to British Leyland, who then marketed the crawler range under the Aveling Marshall division. Leyland dropped Marshalls diesel road roller production, in favour of Aveling-Barford's rollers who they also owned. They then merged Marshalls with Aveling to form Aveling Marshall Ltd. They developed some new models to compete with the rise in higher horsepower tractors taking over from crawlers. The AM100, AM110 and AM105, the later switching to a Ford engine. These new models having a cab as standard.
But quality went down hill and Leyland (in trouble at the time) sold the crawler tractor division off to local businessman Charles Nickerson in 1979. They improved quality and also bought the wheeled tractor division in 1981/2, but that proved more troublesome and brought the company down in 1985. The Marshall tractors operation being sold to Bentall Simplex and moved to Scunthorpe. (From 1989 Bentall Simplex imported Steyr tractors from Steyr-Daimler-Puch in Austra, till 1991 when Steyr opened their own UK operation).
The crawler division was bought from the receivers by Hubert Flatters, an ex Marshall-Fowler man, in a management buy out to form Track Marshall of Gainsborough Ltd. They introduced a new model the TM 155 in 1985 following increased demand due to the poor weather in 1983-84. But he died in 1987 and the company was sold in 1990 to TWR Industrial group. TWR imported an Australian rubber tracked crawler by Waltanna, to sell as the Track Marshall 200. ? (Other sources describe the TM 200 as a Marshall design). By 1994 sales had fallen off and production moved to a built to order basis for the TM 135, and rebuilding older machines.
Some of the story is missing can you help fill in the gaps ?
Naming convention
The name has been used in several forms during the 'brands' life. Early machine had the hyphenated form Track-Marshall used on the machines sides, with the latter Track Marshall Ltd machines using the un hyphenated form. Marshall publicity and other Publications appear to use both forms in the early days.The Aveling Marshall era appears to use the name in both forms as well with the hyphenated name used for model designation on the machine sides.
- So we will use the Hyphenated for for most models except the last ones (with a redirect from the alternative versions).
Model Range
Marshall-Fowler years
A Fowler FD3 at the Carrington Rally 2010
A restored Fowler FD4 seenCarrington Rally 2010
Four Track Marshall's (foreground) and Fowler Challenger 33, TM 200, TM 9500, TM 155 (background)
A rare Track Marshall 9500 at the Carrington Rally 2010
- Crawler tractors
- Fowler FD2
- Fowler FD3
- Fowler FD4
- Marshall / Fowler VF
- Marshall / Fowler VFA
- Fowler Challenger range
- Marshall-Fowler Challenger 1
- Marshall-Fowler Challenger 3
- Marshall-Fowler Challenger 4
- Marshall-Fowler Challenger 22
- Marshall-Fowler Challenger 33
- Track-Marshall 48 hp Perkins - 1956
- TM 50 50 hp Perkins L4 - 1956 (August)
- TM 55 55 hp Perkins 4.270D - 1959
- TM 55 Refuse Control - special with blade and special features for tips
- TM 56 56 hp perkins 4.270D - 1968
- TM 56 Angle Dozer
- TM 56S
- TM 60 Tracked shovel
- TM 70 70 hp Perkins 6.354 6-cylinder - 1961
- TM 70H 70 hp Perkins (Hydraulic slewing clutch version) - 1963
- TM 75 75 hp Perkins - 1968
- TM 85B Powershift
- TM 90 90 hp Perkins 6.354T
- Marshall TM 2 Bowel Scraper
- TM 1100 Tracked Shovel (formerly the Bristol Taurus)
- TM 1600 Tracked Shovel 1 1/2 cu yd
- TM 1700 Tracked Shovel 1 3/4 cu yd
- TM 9500 Tracked Shovel based on TM135 (17 only built) fitted with a Perkins A6.354.[2]
Leyland / Aveling Marshall years
- AM 100 100 hp Perkins - 1975
- AM 105 105 hp Ford 2715E 6-cylinder
- AM 110 110 hp Perkins
- AM 120 120 hp Ford 2715E 6-cylinder - 1976
- TM 125
- AM 135 137 hp Perkins 6.354T 6-cylinder - 1979
Track Marshall Ltd years
- TM 135 Relaunched AM 135 after sale to Nickerson group
- AM 140 (Upgraded Fowler Challenger 33)
- TM Britannia 70 hp Perkins 4.236 4-cylinder - 1981-1990
Track Marshall of Gainsborough Ltd
The Track-Marshall TM 200 / Waltanna UK prototype
- TM 135 135 hp - continuation of earlier design
- TM 155 155 hp Perkins A6.354 - 1985
- TM 200 200 hp Cummins Rubber tracked - 1990-93
- TM 250 250 hp Cummins Rubber tracks - 1992-93
Preserved machines
There are often examples of preserved machines at the UK steam fairs or at historic vehicle shows featuring tractors, (some are shown above)
- Track-Marshall 55 sn ? - of Robert Crawford
- Track-Marshall 55 of Peter Gaskins
- Track-Marshall 55 sn 9302100 - of B. Holland
- Track-Marshall 56 of Fred Evans (seen on the CMN Forum)
- Track-Marshall 70 of ?
- Track-Marshall 70 of ?
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| Make & model | reg no | serial no | date built | engine | owner |
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Dealers
- Robert Crawford - Track Marshall specialists based in Lincolnshire
See also
- List of Construction Plant Manufacturers
- Agricultural Machinery
- Shows and Meets
- List of Tractor Dealers
- Web Site Links
- Related companies
Other Manufacturers of Crawler tractors
- Caterpillar
- Claas Rebranded Caterpillar Challenger Rubber Tracked machines
- David Brown
- Fiat-Allis
- John Deere - Lindemann conversions
- International
- Mailiam - Ford conversions
- Massey Ferguson - Landini
- Roadless
References / sources
- Wikipedia - John Fowler & Co extract
- Old Tractor Magazine Issue 14 Crawler special article
- Nuffield, Leyland and Marshall 1948-85 by Allan T Condie
- Three Decades of Marshall Tractors, By Peter Anderson, pub by Farming Press, ISBN 0-85236-380-X]]
External links
- Site with some Marshall / Leyland / Track Marshall info / photos :- [1]
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This page uses some content from Wikipedia. The original article was at John Fowler & Co. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with Tractor & Construction Plant Wiki, the text of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons by Attribution License and/or GNU Free Documentation License. Please check page history for when the original article was copied to Wikia |