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Farms used a system of cables. The tracker, because it was too heavy, would only stay on the side and a cable and pulley system employed. The plough would be

Farms used a system of cables. The tracker, because it was too heavy, would only stay on the side and a cable and pulley system employed. The plough would be suspended from the cable and driven back and forth across the field. The tracker, and anchoring vehicle on the other side, would be slowly driven in parallel. https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-balance-plough-being-pulled-by-a-cable-from-a-fowler-ploughing-engine-50085624.html https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-a-balance-plough-being-pul... https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CWDH37/fowler-ploughing-engine-15357-built-in-1919-ct-4132-with-cable-drawn-CWDH37.jpg https://c8.alamy.com/comp/CWDH37/fowler-ploughing-engine-153... I think such a system would be easier to automate: cabling above a field, with an automated vehicle for spraying, harvesting, dealing with weeds.

ggm 8y ago
My mum told me she remembered seeing this in wiltshire in the 1930s, and it was used for drainage pipe laying a lot too. The "mole" which is pulled through the ground laying the pipes has a huge amount of static resistance to overcome, the fowler engine had bloody huge anchors to stop it being pulled towards the mole. If you see a steam-engine at a fairground or history society and it has a giant wheel under the boiler mounted horizontally, thats what its for: this kind of static engine work. There were mobile threshers which used it too as a form of PTO using belts. The whole business was a convoy of about three trucks and associated labour. Steam trucks. Awesome! I was hitchhiking in Yorkshire once back in the 1980s, on an "A" road (not a motorway) and a steam engine passed me by the other way. I was so tempted to cross the road and hitch a ride the wrong way...