What an interesting and diverse thread this is and some great contributions covering many years and decades of Massey manufacturing, with worldwide memories coming to the fore.
Only this morning I was going into our local news agents shop in our local town of Horncastle to collect a Classic Massey magazine, coming out the door I bumped into one of our old neighbours who farmed land in our village up to the late 1990's, he is currently 94 years of age and very active with a fantastic memory.
I knew they had a M-H 12-20 new in the early 30's and this morning asked him if he had any old photographs of it at work, unfortunately not but he soon started to recall his memories and love for the tractor, his most vivid story this morning was.
As a teenager and the tractor only a few months old, he was out harrowing in the field ready to sow spring barley, it came a heavy shower of rain and stopped him, so he drove the tractor back to the yard and under the cart shed to keep dry, he got off the tractor to turn off the parrafin and realised he was not far enough forward, so jumped back on the tractor and pulled on the clutch, it snapped over centre and before he knew it he had crashed into the shed brick wall and the tractor stalled. On investigation the cast radiator top hose had smashed the corner out of the cylinder head, the radiator was pushed back into the fan and water running out everywhere. His next job was working out how to tell father what he had done.
The next day they had to take the head, top hose and radiator into Lincoln for repairs, as welding was unheard of in rural areas, this was a round trip of 75 miles in a very early old car, which took most of the day. The radiator received a new core and head and pipe repaired, then back to Lincoln to collect them and refit to the tractor, in all about a week of work with the tractor was lost but eventually it was up and running and used for many more years, but he was always careful when engaging the clutch.
His next experience was to wrap the harrow stretcher into the lugs and as the wheel turned buckled the fender when turning too tight on the corners.
There are not many people left now who remember operating these early tractors and both he and I enjoyed the stories this morning and definately a tractor well "remembered, gone and not forgotten"
Malcolm.