Blow off some steam at vintage machinery expo

Winery founder Chris Pask with his 1904-built Brown and May steam traction engine, which lives in a shed at his winery on Omahu Rd next to another 1904 engine, among some rare tractors. Photo/Clinton Llewellyn

Rare vintage machines like Chris Pask's 1904-built Brown and May steam traction engine are expected to draw 10,000 people to the two-day Junction Vintage Machinery Expo in CHB later this month.

The 76-year-old founder of Pask Winery in Hastings said the six-tonne, four horsepower engine was one of only two of its kind still in existence.

"One lives in a little village near Boston in Lincolnshire in England, and then there's this one.

They are the only known ones in the world. Well, there is another one, but it's at the bottom of Napier Harbour somewhere - it fell off the side of a ship and they never recovered it."

Built in 1904 by Brown and May in Devizes in Wiltshire, Mr Pask said the engine was imported from England into the region by Anthony Leipst.

"He was a well-driller, and I've got some lovely old photos of it [drilling] in its heyday. But I also have photos of her pulling down buildings in Russell St [in Hastings] after the [1931 Hawke's Bay] earthquake."

Mr Pask was given the traction engine close to four decades ago by Len Watkins, who lived on Avenue Rd.

"He bought it from old man Leipst with the view of getting it back into service, but they never did. Around wartime [in World War II] they took it to bits and took it off steam. The boiler went out to Arataki Motor Camp [in Havelock North] to heat water for the next 20 or 30 years. And old Len said 'you can have it provided you restore it', so it came back."

Mr Pask sent the engine to Rotorua engineer Bruce Pilcher, who had it surveyed and new drawings made up and started working on it.

"It came back 25 years later," he said.

he said. "He [Pilcher] did a tremendous amount of work on it. It was a labour of love. He's made it better than it was."

Mr Pask has a similar story about how he came to own another 1904-built traction engine, a W & H McLaren engine, which also sits in the shed of his winery alongside rare vintage diesel tractors from the 1940s and 50s.

Pask bought the engine about 25 years ago from Len Watkins' widow after it had been laying derelict on their property for years after its firebox collapsed.

"She said she would sell it to me, again provided I restored it, so we did that. She's just about back the way God made it," he said about the larger 12-tonne McLaren engine, which was used for threshing grain at harvest time.

But the smaller Brown and May engine was his favorite, he said.

"She's small and she's rare and she's only a two-speed - either slow or very slow."

He admired the amount of skill that had had gone into building both of them and other engines of that era.

"They are a lot more complicated than people give them credit for. There's a tremendous amount of expert engineering that goes into them."

Mr Pask explained his love of traction engines and vintage machinery stemmed back to his days growing up in England.

"I was born on a farm in England so I've always been keen on anything to do with agriculture and machinery. And when you think that back in their heyday, the only alternative [to the traction engine] was the horse, it was a major breakthrough when they started doing agriculture with steam."

One of the founding members of the HB Vintage Machinery Club, Mr Pask will be exhibiting both his engines at the club's two-day expo on SH50 near Takapau on the weekend of March 25 and 26.

He said the expo would make for a nice rural day out with the family.

"Come and have a look for goodness sake. We surprised a lot of people when we did the first [expo] four years ago. It was very successful, and by all accounts there's even more exhibitors coming this year. There'll be huge tonnage," he said.

- For details about the club's upcoming expo, visit hbvintagemachinery.org.nz