[SEL] Ronaldson-Tippett Centenary

[Brock Summerfield]

G,day All

It was awsome to see so many side shaft engines in one place
it was a  very good rally.
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Patrick M Livingstone" <pml1 at bigpond.net.au>
To: "Stationary Engine ATIS List" <sel at lists.stationary-engine.com>; 
"Stationary Engine Mailing List" <stationary-engine at oldengine.org>
Sent: Monday, October 25, 2004 9:13 PM
Subject: [SEL] Ronaldson-Tippett Centenary


> 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/
>
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