A fine but very blustery day saw Carlisle Airport filled with machines and items of a byegone era.
The 26th Annual Hethersgill Vintage Rally seemed as popular as ever, with over 1000 exhibitors displaying steam powered traction engines to collections of match boxes and lawn mowers.
Cumbria being an agricultural area, it seemed only natural that the vintage tractors would dominate the scene.
The famous battleship grey, ferguson tractors revolutionised farming in the 1930’s with the use of hydraulics and are still useful workhorses to this day.
These were closely followed by other vehicles, both domestic and commercial.
A luxuriant Model T Ford would have been the talk of the town in 1912 and a local logging truck has led a double life, being built on a WWII Artillery Tractor Chasis,
A section for motorcycles was dominated by BSA with the 1925 Rover WG and 1931 Honda Benly being the two oldest bikes on display.
Of course the darlings of the show had to be the six steam traction engines. Marshall 1 is a local 99 year old beauty, lovingly restored by father and son team Gerald and Mike Burns, with a little help from their friends.
Ten Miniature, scale steam engines chugged around the site and were equally as resplendent as their full size counterparts, bearing the names of famous manufacturers such as Burrell, Marshall, Foden and Scammell.
An eclectic range of memorabilia filled the large marquee, numbering among them an extensive matchbox collection, started by a single box on a flight to Canada many years ago.
A collection of cameras and photographs showed how we have rapidly evolved from the Plate cameras to the film versions that we are more familiar with, but of course all redundant in this day of digital technology and storage.
Alan Head from Penrith, brought along many household and agricultural items and amused onlookers with his witty stories about gadgets to train bull horns, a six hole mouse trap and even a mechanical shaver which you stopped operating at your peril!
The on site auction sale, proved ever popular for the engine restoration enthusiast, memoribilia collector or even a budding Lewis Hamilton. In fact everything right down to the kitchen sink.
Contact
Hethersgill Vintage Rally, Carlisle Airport. Norman Elliott, tel: 01228 675336 or 07831 127138.
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