I remember it well. It all started in the yard owned by Steve Neville in the village of Fulbourne. EDNA had come down on a low-loader from East Bridgeford, Notts, and she weighed 8 tons. Oh, I should have told you, in case you had got the wrong idea, EDNA is an Aveling and Porter steam roller, built in 1923. I bought the roller because I wanted a steam engine that I could take to rallies. I already owned a Burrell traction engine, but that was having major boiler repairs carried out by Steve Neville.
The weekend after there was to be a steam rally at Chippenham park, which was only 17 miles from Fulbourne. As I had never driven a steam vehicle on the road, I thought that the journey would be just right for learning how to do it. I had a small camping trailer made out of the back-end of an Austin A35 van that I had cut up a few years earlier. At that time I had four little Austin vans on the road for my electrical business. Oh, how I wish I had kept one. They were a marvellous little motor. Anyway, back to the trailer. I made a drop towing bar for the roller with a ball coupling and loaded the trailer with a 40 gallon water tank and 5 cwt of coal. It now became a fuel tender.
As I needed tuition, my friend Gordon Wells, owner of  a rare Fowell traction engine, let me borrow one of his more experienced helpers, Bob Green. Saturday saw my 11 year old son Stephen and Bob arrive nice and early  for the journey to Chippenham Park. It took about 2 hours to raise steam, during which time Bob and I went over the route to sort out water stops etc. taking careful note of where the hydrants were, while young Stephen was left in charge of raising steam, which he did very well. The roller was standing near the rear fence of the yard and some old girl in the house kept complaining about the smoke. Naturally I apologised and carried on. I let the engine roll over out of gear. Now the Aveling is what is known as a four shaft engine, i.e. crankshaft, 2nd shaft, 3rd shaft then axle. Therefore, the crankshaft revolves backwards when the roller is going forwards. I thought it looked nicer with the flywheel revolving forwards, while it was standing out of gear, so I pulled the reversing lever back. After a short while we had enough steam to get moving, so I shut the regulator, stopped the engine and put it in low gear (it only has two gears). "All clear", I shouted to Bob. "OK", said Bob, so I slowly opened the regulator. It's a good job I did open it slowly. I forgot the lever was still in reverse. The roller gave a chuff and promptly went backwards. I managed to stop it just before it went through the fence in the garden of the old girl. She would have had something to complain about then.
We hooked the trailer on, filled the tank, loaded the coal and off we went. I was driving, Bob was steering and Steve was sitting on the coal sacks in the trailer. It was a nice feeling being in charge of a steam engine for the first time. As I went through Fulbourne village, the roller decided to prime water, soot and steam out of the chimney, not nice for anyone watching nearby. I quickly opened the drain cocks and closed the regulator a little. We went on over the level crossing, blowing our whistle to the crossing keeper as we did so.
We had only travelled a few miles, when I decided Stephen would be a lot safer up on the roller, so we sat him in the bunker on top of the coal. A bit further on, Bob said we were getting a bit low on water. There was a stream running under a bridge just ahead, so I pulled over to fill up with the water lifter. The stream was practically dry, we couldn't lift water. "What do we do now?" I said to Bob. "There's a fire hydrant across the road" he said, "let's pull over to the other side of the road". It was a dangerous position to be in. We were facing the wrong way, the road was not very wide and there was a blind bend just ahead. Stephen was sent off round the corner with a red flag, and told to wave it and stop any cars. Meanwhile, Bob was busy with the monkey wrench trying to turn the hydrant on as we didn't have a key. A couple of minutes later, Stephen comes back, accompanied by a policeman in a Morris Minor  panda car that he had stopped. It was the first car that had come along, typical!! The copper wanted to know what we were supposed to be up to. As it would appear that we were pinching water, we then had to explain that there was not enough in the stream and if we didn't get any into the boiler, it might blow up. With that, he went out into the road and directed the traffic, while we got on with filling up. Within a short while, we said goodbye to our friendly policeman and went on our way.
About three miles further, I was having difficulty in getting the injector on, probably because I had not got much steam, so we pulled onto the grass and tried to get the pump to work - it didn't. So we had to fiddle about until it did. Then, along comes our policeman again. "What's up this time?" he asked. We tell him. Then he tells us there is a big block of wood laying in the road further back. Yes, it was ours alright, it must have fell off after we had picked up water. So Stephen went back in the panda car and they came back with our block. The policeman bid us farewell and probably hoped he would never see us again. It's just as well he didn't. We got water in the boiler, raised a bit more steam and set off again to the next village. By this time the water tank was low again. Bob spotted another hydrant on the other side of the road and steered the roller across. The hydrant was near a tarmac run which looked quite new. As the engine was going a bit too fast, Bob had a job in turning the steering back in time, the front roll went onto the nice new tarmac and started to sink through it. I looked in horror and kept on going, while Bob managed to turn back off the run in, leaving it with a nice roman end, with about a six inch step up, instead of a gradual slope. We continued, still very low on water and steam, with very little water showing on the gauge glass. "We can't keep going on like this", said Bob, "we'll have to get in somewhere and chuck the fire out". There was a factory just round the corner, so we pulled into their yard and stopped. Bob rapidly started to shovel the fire out onto the concrete, when a man in uniform came running across. "What do you think you're doing", he shouted out. "You are on top of our petrol storage tanks". We chucked a bucket of water on the burning embers and the security man gave us permission to park the roller further round in the car park and also to do repairs. As the factory worked 24 hours, they said we could work late, if needed.
With that, we left the engine and caught a taxi to the rally field. My wife, Betty, was already on the field with our caravan which we had taken there earlier, so we had dinner and returned to the roller, refreshed, accompanied by friend Brian Bourne, who owns a Burrell traction engine, and is also a very knowledgeable engineer. We worked into the early hours, grinding in valve clacks etc. to make the pump work better. The factory staff kept coming out with tea and refreshments for us, and to see how we were getting on. It must have been very rare for a firm like theirs to have a steam roller in the yard, especially one that had tried to blow the firm up.
Next day, we continued our journey to the rally field, I think without any more problems. We had a really enjoyable time, one that none of us will ever forget.

Arthur Bullman