Tractor Tuesday - Renault 56

Had to go to Ottobeuren with the horse trailer to pick up something for Angie so thought a dogwalk from a largish car park was sensible. Did a walk we last did in November starting from the Observatory down to the hamlet of Wolferts and back through the Bannwald.

I was very doubtful of seeing a tractor. Yesterday every tractor was on the road, today nothing. All the fields have been mowed and are now a lovely slurry brown colour. As it is due to rain and get cold today, seems almost everyone is concentrating on having dry firewood for the coming week!

And indeed we saw no moving tractors but spotted this one. I took a photo and thought I would have to find something more interesting. In the evening on yet another trip to Ottobeuren with the horse trailer and with Angie, spotted the parked wood harvester just down the road from us. So made the effort of clambering over logs to get a good shot of it and it's "head". So that was the end of the Renault's Blip fame.

However when Bliping the Renault, I noticed it had a "MWM" motor. I had never heard of it so researched a bit and came up with lots of interesting things and suddenly the Renault was back in the headline. The motor itself - 2.6 liter, 3 cylinder, 43hp - is nothing special but the manufacturer,  MWM (Motorenwerke Mannheim) is. Mannheim is also the home of John Deere in Germany when they bought the Lanz tractor business.

MWM is now part of Caterpillar and concentrates on building motors for CHP - Cogeneration of heating & electricity from a motor. It is the largest such manufacturer worldwide and one of the top 3 gas & diesel engine builders. However it started in 1922 when Benz hived off some of it's diesel business and was founded by a German engineer with the wonderful teutonic name of Prosper L'Orange! Prosper was ultimately responsible for the death of the UK invented "Hot bulb engine". Then found out Cadbury's were the first to have self powered narrowboats (1911) powered by hot bulb engines. Last had a taste of Cadbury's at Easter when son, J, bought over a bar for Angie (and Polo Mints for the horses and Walkers Digestives for me).

Have still included the tree harvester as an Extra Photo together with one of the cutting/stripping head about 2 meters tall - while the tree stump is cut with a chainsaw, the branches are simply ripped off by the two knobbly rollers. Apparently the contractors don't like doing "storm damage" work. On a normal job they would hope to change chainsaws maybe twice a day - With storm wood, there are often "foreign" objects thrown up which can mean changing chains 15+ times!

Apart from the dog walk and two trips to Ottobeuren, did a third one with the horse trailer to a a village near Mindelheim to pick up something which may be useful when the grandchildren come.

And the rain came in the night and the temperature slid!

Had I did some months ago