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The Marshall of Maewa

One of the engines to be found housed at the Feilding Steam Traction Society’s premises at Maewa, just outside the town of Fielding in the North Island of New Zealand, is Marshall 6hp single cylinder agricultural traction engine No 38906 of 1902 and exported to New Zealand on completion. She has been at the club since the early 1990s, owned by Colin Graham who has been a long-standing member of the society.

Nowadays Colin lets John Munro have total control of looking after the Marshall. Readers may remember John from when he found fame among New Zealand enginemen after laying to rest another ‘buried engine’ myth – when he exhumed Burrell single crank compound engine No 2155 of January 7, 1899, out of the ground on December 27, 2007 (OG 218) and he is also involved with other projects at Maewa.

I caught up with John and the Marshall at the Horowhenua Harvest Festival rally, held at Levin – about 40 miles from Feilding – on February 12-13, 2011. Some of the other engines from Feilding that attended this event were driven there – taking around seven hours on the road, but John, along with Jack Larsen’s McLaren, came by low loader, both arriving with a full head of steam. The McLaren was off first, then the Marshall. John then took her into the field where she was going to be hitched up to the new saw bench that the club had just been donated.

The next morning John was up bright and early and soon had a head of steam. He was in his element to be belted to the saw bench and had the Marshall under total control. The bark eminating from her sounded just like any other engine under load and sounded great. John was now covered in smuts but you knew he was having a ball. Owner Colin Graham arrived to check that all was well but he knew she was in good hands.

Steve McLune, one of the Feilding stalwarts, was to be found keeping cool under his Burrell Dixie Flyer and he was able to regale me with the history of the Marshall.

When the Marshall arrived in New Zealand it was believed to be given to one Walter White by his fiancee Miss Watkins. The Watkins family were large threshing contractors up in the Hawkes Bay district and the deal was that he could marry Miss Watkins but only on the understanding that he would not undertake any threshing contracts in the vicinity of Hawkes Bay – that’s a daughters dowry from her father with a difference!

Walter White set up a house-moving business alongside general contracting work, using the engine. House moving in New Zealand in those days of course saw houses and churches and suchlike built on wooden piles and when it was time to move them, they were jacked up, a trailer placed underneath, the jacks lowered, the steam engine hitched up and they were on their way to the next location.

Walter kept the Marshall for the next 30 years. She then passed through several owners before finishing up at Miles Bros, sawmillers of Ashley Clinton in the Central Hawkes Bay area. Here she was used for winching timber into the mill, a location that once owned a very large Davey Paxman portable engine, which is now to be found at the Matakohi Kauri Museum near Dargaville, North Island.

In 1993 she came to the end of her working life. Colin purchased the Marshall and got it low-loaded down to Maewa where she was placed into a dry storage shed.  It took no time before Colin got all the old tubes out and new ones put in. The firebox required much attention and other mechanical repairs were undertaken to get her back into steam. She was then put on to rubber tyres before receiving her final coats of paint.

Fortunately Colin had found traces of the old Marshall green paint from when she’d originally been delivered. It took no time to have the green mixed, and with a lot of parts removed she was repainted. She was soon back in steam and running around the grounds as well as being roaded to rallies under her own steam.

Colin should be congratulated for allowing John to caretake the engine and take her out. John is only 23 and it seems that he can’t get enough of steam. Let’s hope more enginemen put their confidence in young people, for without youngsters like this, who in time will look after them?