Talk:Steamroller

Merge Discussion (Steamroller to Traction engine)
I note the proposal to merge STEAM ROLLER with TRACTION ENGINE

In my view, that would be a mistake.

I'd rather see each with a link to the other subject.

The two machines were designed for quite separate purposes; as were ploughing engines.

23 Aug 2006 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 60.224.182.46 (talk) 05:10, 23 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I am in complete agreement, however others take a different view. I am keen to get the matter cleared up quickly as I believe it is stifling development on these pages.


 * Please see Talk:Traction engine for the discussion about this merger, and there contribute your support against the merge taking place.


 * Thank you. EdJogg 14:15, 25 August 2006 (UTC)

No merge required
No further discussion has taken place since my previous postings, so this is obviously not a hot topic for discussion! I have been steadily adding to the three articles, as time permits, and I have nearly three film-rolls worth of photos taken at the recent Great Dorset Steam Fair still to incorporate in the articles (when I have learned how).

As described in the other talk pages (Talk:Traction engine and Talk:Road roller), these three articles should remain separate, and the merge banners have therefore now been removed.

EdJogg 23:58, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Reverted changes
To the editing nazis who jump down your throat in 1/2 a nanosecond as you attempt to clean up pages: back off.

Also: this page visually is garbage, thanks to all the superfluous banners. Remove, ten foot high banners, and put in talk page, centre and enlarge photo. In future, I will take my exceptional editing skills elsewhere, and not be subject to the Meta data meter maids that seem to clog up wiki now. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.81.77.33 (talk) 15:58, 30 August 2006 (UTC)


 * I think your changes were reverted due to your removal of the 'disputed merge' banners without providing supporting explanation in the talk page. Unless anyone objects in the very near future, these banners will be removed as part of the ongoing evolution of this article. EdJogg 13:51, 4 September 2006 (UTC)

A definition...
Flatulence (noun) --- the emergency vehicle that picks you up after you are run over by a steamroller.


 * Found during internet research - sorry, couldn't resist! -- EdJogg 13:39, 8 September 2006 (UTC)

Aveling & Porter - most prolific roller makers?
These two comments were a reply to a query on the talk page for Rochester, Kent, after I had added a paragraph about Aveling & Porter in the history section. Copied here for convenient reference...


 * My information comes from a huge (18" square!) 1976 book I inherited: "Pride of the Road - the pictorial story of traction engines" (which is much more than a picture book, thankfully - about 50% text!). Page 145 describes how Thomas Aveling made arrangements to manufacture the Batho patent roller design "...which unquestionably made the Aveling and Porter concern the world's largest manufacturer of steam rollers. They subsequently produced more of these machines than the combined total output of their other British competitors." Later on it states that 6000 steam rollers were produced for GB use between 1845 and 1940 (plus hundreds for export), but it is not clear if this was just from A&P or not!  I have no idea about the size of their 'agricultural machines' business, so I just stated what I knew.  I was just updating 'traction engine', and was surprised to find no (direct) mention of the firm in the Rochester article.


 * Another reference: "Discovering Traction Engines" (Shire Publications 1975). In the section on steam rollers, only three manufacturers are mentioned, and two are just 'in passing'.  (The other book lists 5 other major, and 8 minor, manufacturers.) "Aveling & Porter was the most famous of all the steam roller firms. Of the 12,700 steam engines which they made, no less than 8,600 of them were steam rollers."


 * Still wouldn't like to say that A & P were the biggest agricultural machinery manufacturers in the country, but they sure did build a lot of rollers!

EdJogg 00:52, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

The two biggest makers of traction engines & variants were Aveling & Porter and Fowlers. In the case of A & P somewhere around a third or more of their production was rollers which fits with the figures given. I'm excluding portables from the calculation since other companies such as Garrett and Clayton & Shuttleworth produced masses of those in comparison to their production of over engines.

The 6000 machines cited in the reference would fit with Aveling & Porter's production alone with probably around another 4-5000 from the other makers with Fowler probably being in second place with Marshall third. Marshall is a little strange in that they were still going after most of the others and picked up government related orders in the late 30s and early 40s. Chenab (talk) 15:52, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Popular culture section
Warning klaxons should go off when an article's "in popular culture" section is as long as the rest of the article. I've a good mind to delete most of this. Chris Cunningham 08:37, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Well, the correct, and most helpful, response would be to do some research and improve the article that way, since the 'warning klaxons' are correctly indicating that more work is required. It just happens that I did a block of 'thorough research' on-line (and in WP)  in the area of popular culture.  My view is that anyone researching steam rollers would be interested to see how they have been portrayed in the media – besides which, I think this section is as large as it's going to get!


 * Rather than just deleting work which has taken some time to get into shape, it would be much more helpful if you can provide information about the history of these machines, or the way in which they were used differently from more modern rollers, or how they had an impact on road transport, etc, etc.


 * Alternatively, if you have access to the full Oxford English Dictionary, I would like to know the etymology of the term 'to steamroller', in terms of 'overwhelming', since that is another section which is sorely needed, and the on-line information is inadequate.


 * Incidentally, I do not dispute the validity of your first sentence, but the second sentence is inappropriately antagonistic.


 * EdJogg 09:10, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * Sorry about the tone. Given that the article is of fairly limited scope, there's only so far that the useful parts can be expanded. I'm seriously not a fan of "in popular culture" sections in articles, which are of limited encyclopedic value almost all of the time. Ditto for the dictionary stuff, especially given that the term is fairly obvious (what with a steamroller being large, heavy and hard to stop as a rule). It's always good to remember that nothing added to WP is sacred, regardless of how much time went into it. Chris Cunningham 09:49, 4 April 2007 (UTC)


 * In response to the original comment, I have now moved the Popular Culture entries relating to motor rollers to road roller, and tidied up afterwards. The section is still 'large', but is all relevant, and now only occupies one third of the article, instead of one half! Next stage is to start adding some history... EdJogg 23:00, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

Reference material?

 * WikiPatents: 1945 patent by Aveling Barford for a gearbox designed to be connected one way round to a steam engine, and the other way round to an ICE, to reduce spares part holdings


 * Road Roller Asscociation: "A Steam Roller is for Life" -- Treatise on the problem of 'conversions', where a steam roller is converted into some form of 4-wheeled traction engine and, often as not, passed-off as a historically accurate vehicle. The article, which appeared in Old Glory, discusses how owners of such vehicles are often shunned in the preservation world, and may be forced to sell the vehicle outside the UK. Also notes the financial basis for such conversions and problems of 'destroying history'.


 * Hansard: Proposed private members bill (?) for the "Protection of Listed Vehicles" -- note, entry actually starts at foot of previous page. Discusses proposal for protective status, similar to building listing, for historic vehicles, and makes mention of the 'conversion' problem above.

EdJogg 12:48, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

Are roller 'wheels' known as 'rolls'?
Having bumped into roll, which is a disambiguation page, I tried to establish formally whether the 'wheels' on a steam roller (or motor roller) were known as 'rolls' rather than / as well as 'rollers'. (Yes, I wanted to add an entry on that page...)

In the half-hour of googling I had available today, I found no suitable references on-line, but I am convinced that this is the case.

Can anyone please confirm my suspicions, preferably with some appropriate references?

EdJogg 12:53, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

I spent some time looking at contemporary materials last night (Engineer, Engineering and books on Road making). It would appear that initially the wheels were known as rollers but the use changed, probably to avoid using the same term for the machine and also part of it. I would therefore suggest using rolls as the best term, certainly that is the common one in use now to refer to that part of preserved machines.

On the subject the section on wheels is wrong, the front roll is not a single wide cylinder, it is two cylinders side by side with a small gap between the two. This probably seems illogical since it means there is potentially a ridge in the tarmac between the two rolls - in practice this doesn't happen. More importantly having two rolls means there is a chance of steering the beast rather than trying to skid a large single roll in the direction you want to go. Any maker who claimed their roller had fast & responsive steering was almost certainly lying, some early Avelings almost need psychic abilities on behalf of the steersman to know when a turn is coming up. Chenab (talk) 16:00, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Advisory: 'Mirror' at commercial site
Just to avoid any claims of copyvio, the information found on the Anyang Gemco pages: "Services" and "Steam Rolling - An Historical Background" were based on the en:Wikipedia articles (road roller, steam roller), not the other way round. (I recognised text, phrases and structure that was originally added to both articles by me.) -- EdJogg (talk) 10:34, 17 September 2009 (UTC)

Speculation in article
"A few steam rollers were still being used for road maintenance in the early 1970s, and this may go some way to explaining why diesel-powered rollers are still colloquially known as steam rollers to this day."

Having just watched a diesel road roller in operation it seems perfectly obvious why they are still colloquially called steam rollers. The lubricating water sprayed on the rolls evaporates very quickly on the hot asphalt, so they tend to leave a cloud of steam behind them. Had I not looked it up I would have continued to assume that was the basis of the name. (I hadn't even considered the idea of steam *powered* rollers) 58.6.229.220 (talk) 00:03, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * Possibly, but I doubt it. It's more likely the name just stuck in common usage from the days when steam rollers were steam rollers. Road rollers were originally made for MacAdamised surfaces, without tar, so there would have bben no steam from there.--Roly (talk) 09:17, 28 March 2014 (UTC)
 * If there was any overlap at all between the introduction of HMAC (and the subsequent use of lubricating water on the roll) and the common use of steam rollers, wouldn't it make sense that the term would be adopted for that use case,  regardless of the origins of the device itself? 58.6.191.76 (talk) 12:17, 28 March 2014 (UTC)