So the team which ran the Wallis & Steevens steam locomotive on the day this shot was taken were:
Driver: George Ellis;
Supported by:
Tom Harris, Billy Payne; Frank Jenkins; Frank Webb; Jack Wheeler; Charley Hounslow; (no first name given) Spyers; and Harry Trafford (Senior).
And the locomotive itself weighed 15 tons and was rated as 8 h.p. (horsepower) and cost £519.10.0 (= £519.50) which on one inflation reckoner is the equivalent of £57,720.00 in 2016.
George and Tom, Billy, Frank and Frank and the others were the counterparts of Bernard Cudd and Monty Gurdon, Jack Bennett and the others known to me in the 1950s, in the days of diesel-engined furniture lorries. It is some satisfaction to me to be able to put these earlier names on the record of the company’s faithful staff. (24.10.2016). Presumably some of the younger members of this team may have been called-up to fight in WW1, fourteen or so years later, but it is hard to judge the ages, and perhaps it is unlikely.
I have some records of the fuel and other materials consumption of some of the early AC&Co vehicles, including this one, I believe, and I will try to find the data and add it to this record.
The Wallis & Steevens company has the following history, according to Wikipedia on 25.10.16:
Wallis & Steevens
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
1905-built Wallis & Steevens 3 Ton steam tractor "Lena"
Wallis & Steevens of Basingstoke, Hampshire, England produced agricultural equipment, traction engines and steam and diesel road rollers.
Contents [hide]
History[edit]
The company was founded in 1856 by Arthur Wallis and Charles Haslam in newly built premises which they named The North Hants Ironworks. The works were sited on Station Hill in Basingstoke and the company began trading as Wallis & Haslam. Shortly afterwards the company was highly commended for its hand-worked bench drilling machine at the 1857 Royal Agricultural show in Salisbury. Even at this early stage, the company was producing a wide variety of agricultural equipment, and alongside the bench drill were corn drills, turnip drills, four types of horse hoe, drag harrows, a 3 hp threshing machine, a barley hummeller and sundry other devices. In 1862 a third partner, Charles James Steevens, joined the company and when Charles Haslam retired in 1869 the company became Wallis & Steevens. The date of production for the company's first Portable steam engine is not known although the earliest surviving drawing is dated 1866. The first traction engine, an 8 hp single, was built in 1877 from drawings by Arthur Herbert Wallis (son of the company founder) and this vehicle made its trial run on 21 June that year. The vehicle, named "Success" on the strength of its performance during the test, was given the works number T250.
Manufacture of steam vehicles gradually gave way to internal combustion models from the 1930s and production continued at the Station Hill premises until its enforced closure with the redevelopment of Basingstoke town centre during 1966/67. Production was then transferred to a site at Daneshill where the company enjoyed a brief resurgence before the general trading recession of 1980/81. In May 1981 agreement was reached with BSP International Foundations Ltd of Ipswich to "take over the designs and copyrights of the current production models, together with spares, components and goodwill, and for the business to be transferred to the BSP works at Claydon". The transfer was completed by July 1981 and at that point Wallis & Steevens ceased to trade.
(Added 15.10.17): Here, from Wikipedia is some pasted text on the legislative background to the above relating to the Red Flag Act and related legislation:
Locomotive Acts
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Locomotive Acts (or Red Flag Acts) were a series of Acts of Parliament in the United Kingdom regulating the use of mechanically propelled vehicles on British public highways during the latter part of the 19th century.
The first three, The Locomotives on Highways Act 1861, The Locomotive Act 1865 and the Highways and Locomotives (Amendment) Act 1878, contained restrictive measures on the manning and speed of operation of road vehicles; they also formalised many important road concepts such as vehicle registration, registration plates, speed limits, maximum vehicle weight over structures such as bridges, and the organisation of highway authorities.
The most draconic restrictions and speed limits were imposed by the 1865 act (the "Red Flag Act"), which required all road locomotives, which included automobiles, to travel at a maximum of 4 mph (6.4 km/h) in the country and 2 mph (3.2 km/h) in the city, as well as requiring a man carrying a red flag to walk in front of road vehicles hauling multiple wagons.
The 1896 Act removed some restrictions of the 1865 act and raised the speed to 14 mph (23 km/h).
The "Locomotives on Highways Act 1896" provided legislation that allowed the automotive industry in the United Kingdom to develop soon after the development of the first practical automobile (see History of the automobile). The last "locomotive act" was the "Locomotives Act 1898”.
Hence Archer Cowley’s acquisirtion of their first steam tractor in 1901 can be seen as a response to the more encouraging legislative framework that then existed.