I included the Bates Steel Mule form Glebe Farm in a presentation I gave to the Newcomen Society on the Picture Stockton Website. I confessed I had no idea how the “Mule” operated, but Nigel Jopson, one of our members has supplied the answer and this is largely based on what he sent to me.
Essentially the mule was intended to replace a farm horse and was supposed to be hitched up to any farm implement like a plough or a harrow. The published accounts state that, as such, the driver sat on the plough and controlled the mule through a series of long rods, almost as though he was guiding a horse with reins. It was built in the 1917-20 period by the Joliet Oil Tractor Company of Illinois.
However, the version in the picture seems to have incorporated the seat with the mule, with the controls also being brought closer to where the action was. This would have been much more sensible.
I presume the mule was brought to Glebe Farm towards the end of the First World War when there had been a huge effort to improve the output of wheat
It had two steering wheels, at the front, with chain drive to a caterpillar track at the rear. It had a 4-cylinder engine rated at 30 hp, the plough being towed behind. The mule has a very odd shape for the ‘bonnet’. This is because the radiator has a semi-cylindrical shape made up of air tubes, presumably passing through the cooling water rather than the more conventional radiator with vertical water tubes connecting upper and lower header tanks. The caterpillar track was quite novel and was less heavy on the ground than wheels, an important factor with the heavy boulder clays in this area.
Nigel’s s main source of the info was ‘Old Farm Tractors’ by Philip Wright, A & C Black, 1962. But see http://wdm.ca/artifact_articles/bates.html. There is also a clearer picture if you google “Bates Steel Mule Star Courier”
I included the Bates Steel Mule form Glebe Farm in a presentation I gave to the Newcomen Society on the Picture Stockton Website. I confessed I had no idea how the “Mule” operated, but Nigel Jopson, one of our members has supplied the answer and this is largely based on what he sent to me.
Essentially the mule was intended to replace a farm horse and was supposed to be hitched up to any farm implement like a plough or a harrow. The published accounts state that, as such, the driver sat on the plough and controlled the mule through a series of long rods, almost as though he was guiding a horse with reins. It was built in the 1917-20 period by the Joliet Oil Tractor Company of Illinois.
However, the version in the picture seems to have incorporated the seat with the mule, with the controls also being brought closer to where the action was. This would have been much more sensible.
I presume the mule was brought to Glebe Farm towards the end of the First World War when there had been a huge effort to improve the output of wheat
It had two steering wheels, at the front, with chain drive to a caterpillar track at the rear. It had a 4-cylinder engine rated at 30 hp, the plough being towed behind. The mule has a very odd shape for the ‘bonnet’. This is because the radiator has a semi-cylindrical shape made up of air tubes, presumably passing through the cooling water rather than the more conventional radiator with vertical water tubes connecting upper and lower header tanks. The caterpillar track was quite novel and was less heavy on the ground than wheels, an important factor with the heavy boulder clays in this area.
Nigel’s s main source of the info was ‘Old Farm Tractors’ by Philip Wright, A & C Black, 1962. But see http://wdm.ca/artifact_articles/bates.html. There is also a clearer picture if you google “Bates Steel Mule Star Courier”
This tractor spent its working life in Southern Ireland and is now in my collection in Staffordshire.
Nice to see a picture of one of my Grandfather”s products. Thank you.