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History of Canley Works


Adrian

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Hi All

Its a been a while since I last visited the site (in its modern state) and a long time since some of the buildings were up (1996) when Tarmac demolished them. Do you think it might be worthwhile to try poole our resources / access to limited sites where we might build a bit of history associated with our cars birth. Sadly I have photos of the demolition of the water tower (I wish I had more of the rest) and memories of walking thorugh many dark buildings. Maybe have it as a club resource to build up with time.

All I can say is there was pure red diesel seeping out of rock fissures whilst we cleaned up the site as well as an historic cellar buried under a cast slab FULL of TCE contaminated debris - made your eyes sting! I can remember standing 4m below ground level in front of the current hotel because of contamination from an interceptor! Less said about asbestos the better.

But nevertheless this is why i decided to keep a triumph on the road. Does anyone have anything from the heyday? I think it would be really cool to stand close to the production lines where our cars were made.

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14 minutes ago, JohnD said:

"Pure red diesel"?   That for agriculture isn't it?   Why should Triumph be using it (legally?)?

You tease us with your story!  Please tell more!   Why were you "cleaning up the site"?  What did you find?

  Did Ferguson do a diesel version of the Grey Fergie ? 

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My understanding is that red diesel can be used in any non road application;  my friend used it to power his narrow boat.  Also any vehicle used purely on site such as a forklift or an emergency generator?

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  • 3 weeks later...

I work in contaminated land assessments and cleanup so got an insght into quite literally the last days of the factory buildings. Given over 100 yrs of industrial activity there is always much more going on than you'd expect. One area of the site was saturated in aviation fuel so it is highly likely that some war time development work took place and quite possibly onsite fuel storage for plant and vehicles. Dug out a couple of nice historic glass bottles (old dump, nr the rorthern boundary near the level crossing). I did dig up a blank what looks like a con rod cap but the number doesn't corelate to a part number (maybe a casing number). 

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On 21/05/2021 at 11:23, trigolf said:

  Did Ferguson do a diesel version of the Grey Fergie ? 

They did three or four variations - Petrol, Diesel, TVO............................   https://www.acornservicestractorparts.com/acatalog/Ferguson_T20_tractor_parts.html

More good stuff here  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferguson_TE20

 

Roger

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Roger the Little Grey Fergie is held with a lot of esteem here in Oz and are very valuable a few years ago they did a Rally from Geelong to I think Mildura quite a feat slow but steady.

At a Victorian Triumph Concour around 15 years ago an old hand country engineer brought his rebuilt concour Fergie and put a sign in front of it calling it Triumphs F1 model little wheels at front big wheels at back.

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11 minutes ago, Peter Truman said:

Roger the Little Grey Fergie is held with a lot of esteem here in Oz

Harry Ferguson lived and worked not far from me, they have  a memorial garden to him in addition to all of the little Fergies on static display in many local villages. We seem to have so many of them that they can just set them in flowerbeds and leave them there on permanent display...

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1931889757_ScreenShot2021-06-07at11_25_25.png.483d8ddb200ac964f7a2bbf7758a025b.png

 

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Last week's Car S.o.S. (I know a lot don#t like the show but I like the human stories...) they restored one of those...

There is some connection  between Triumph and Ferguson isn't there? In that they shared engines or something?

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Sir John Black, past managing director of Standard Triumph did a deal with Harry Ferguson to build his tractors under licence after WW2. The little grey Fergies were made at Standard's Banner Lane factory.

Cash flow from tractor production bankrolled Standard Triumph car development through the 1950's.

Nigel

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I may have said this before, but I was an apprentice and worked for several years in Banner Lane (Massey Ferguson) in the early 1970s. Quite a lot of the office furniture was still marked 'Standard Motors'

 

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