[SEL] Ronaldson-Tippett Centenary

[Patrick M Livingstone]

Well I am finally home after covering some 2400km since last Thursday. The
Ronaldson-Tippett Centenary Rally was a great success with an estimated 600
engines of which I would guess about 200 were Austral Oil Engines. (For our
non-Aussie list members that means 200 side-shaft engines!). I arrived on
Friday and set my Austral up next to Brock's as we were the only
representatives of the Sydney and Canberra Clubs. From where my engine stood
I could see the remaining structure of the factory where my engine was built
and clearly on the wall could be read "Ronaldson Bros". (The "& Tippett part
of the building is gone). 
Friday night we headed out to Lyndsay's shed and had a look at his engines
and then visited another local collectors shed to look at his engines. I
think we finally got to bed about 1am. 
Saturday was a cold miserable day and it was not helped by the only real
glitch in the rally organising. Quite a number of engines (mine and Brock's
included) did not get any water until well after lunchtime. The club
officials were quite unapologetic about this lapse of organization.
Once we had water the fun part was keeping the oil engines running as a cool
breeze and drizzly rain does not make for good weather to keep them running.
The Saturday night dinner was good and was held amongst an amazing
collection of R-T memorabilia. There were factory ledgers, photos, casting
patterns, parts books, catalogues, etc. Every time you looked around you
found something else amazing too look at.
The weather was a lot better on Sunday and I ended up with sore feet from
walking around trying too see all the engines. There were some very nice
rare examples including the early vertical and horizontal engines, all
manner of Australs, Type D, G, N, Diesels, and even a twin cylinder Type N!
The 3pm shutdown came along amazingly fast and now the fun part was getting
600 engines out of the place when, of course, everyone wanted to leave at
once. Where they failed with the water they succeeded with organising the
departure. Two cranes were working there way down the compounds as well as
club members directing the vehicles loading the engines onto trailers. We
even loaded my engine with the crane which turned a 15 minute job into a 30
second one.
It was a great weekend and I got to catch up with a lot of old (and new)
engine friends. I took over 500 photos which I have to sort through but
these three are pretty special.
http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/rtc04/0410240539.JPG
http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/rtc04/0410240540.JPG
http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/rtc04/0410240541.JPG

They show my Austral in front of the factory where it was built for the
first time since it was built in 1917 :) 

Patrick M Livingstone
Leichhardt NSW
http://www.oldengine.org/members/pml/Index.html
http://www.users.bigpond.com/pml/