Company History
Muir Hill (Engineers Ltd) and Muir-Hill Service Equipment Co Ltd both appear in the 1920s. The latter being announced in 1921 as appointed as sole distributors for Great Britain and Ireland for Dearborn and Hinckley-Myers service equipment, Whitehead and Kale rubber-tread wheels for Fordson tractors, and Mechan steel tipping bodies and gears. Both Muir Hill (Engineers) Ltd and Muir Hill Service Equipment Ltd appear in patents of 1924 (along with Walter Llewelyn Hill as co-author) suggesting the two companies ran side by side. The business may have started as resellers of service equipment, and then formed the engineering company to manufacture their own Fordson accessories. From 1922 their location is given as Ashburton Road, Trafford Park, Manchester. In 1931 Edward Boydell took over and the company was renamed E. Boydell & Co Ltd, though the Muir-Hill trademark continued to be used for its products. In 1959 E. Boydell & Co came under the ownership of Winget Ltd of Kent, but otherwise continued unchanged. Edward Boydell died in July 1962. In 1962 the factory was moved from Manchester to Gloucester, and in 1968 Winget Ltd was acquired by Babcock and Wilcox Ltd, and the E.Boydell company was renamed Muir Hill Ltd. In 1982 Babcock sold its Construction Engineering division including Muir Hill to the German IBH Group a subsidiary of Wilbau AG, however IBH went into receivership in November 1983. Sanderson (Forklifts) Ltd bought Wingets and Muir-Hill from the receiver in June 1984, but they too went into receivership in November 1990. The Muir-Hill business was subsequently acquired byProducts
Initially Muir-Hill appears to have been a reseller of accessories for the Fordson tractor as outlined in the Company History section, however patents in the mid-1920s indicated they were developing their own accessories, such as sprung wheels.Rail Locomotives
Muir Hill products included petrol/paraffin engined railway locomotives based on the Fordson tractor. One of the earliest records is one for the standard gaugeShunters
Muir-Hill produced shunters, but these were Fordson road tractors modified to shunt rail wagons on dockyards, factory yards, and other paved railway sidings - they were not rail vehicles. This was not a short-lived idea, they were produced from the 1920s, until the 1960s. Muir-Hill shunters were introduced at the Fordson Exhibition in 1926. The example shown was fitted with shunting buffers designed for standard gauge wagons, attached by strong girders to the rear axle. The vehicle was fitted with rubber tyres, but with pull out cleats. The front wheels were doubled to prevent problems when crossing points.Loaders and Shovels
Muir-Hill's first association with loaders came in June 1923 when they became agents for an American made 'Speciality Loader' for the Fordson tractor. This had a bucket conveyer to lift material from the back of the tractor, which was then dropped onto a conveyor to discharge in front of the tractor into a waiting wagon. The whole assembly was driven by the tractor PTO pulley. In 1931 at the Roads and Transport Exhibition they showed a Fordson tractor mounted loading shovel alongside their dumper, referred to later as the type 45 loading shovel. Tractor mounted loaders were a standard part of the Muir-Hill offering up to and after the war, with several evolutions in the associated framework to ensure stability on uneven ground. In 1951 they introduced a mini-loader, the LH1, designed for working in confined spaces, and available with petrol or oil engines. This was clearly not an adaptation of a standard Fordson tractor, and marked a significant departure for Muir-Hill. In 1955 a new Supalift version of their 2-WL oil-engined loader was introduced, this having a discharge height of 14ft 8in (the standard WL-2 had a discharge height of 11ft 2in). The Muir-Hill loaders by this stage no longer looked like tractors with attachments. The loaders were available with 6 different buckets according to the load type. In 1958 Muir-Hill introduced their first four wheel drive vehicle, the 4-WL. This was described as a tractor shovel, and had four large wheels, driven by a six speed gearbox with supplementary hub reduction gearing giving 12 forward speeds and four reverse. It was intended as an alternative to a tracked shovel, and employed skid steering much like a tracked vehicle. In 1962 the BD4 tractor shovel was introduced, with a 3.6 litre Fordson Super Major engine, four wheel drive, and rear steering. The same engine was also used in the RD2 rear wheel drive loader. A range of different loaders were produced through the 1960s and 1970s, some 2-wheel drive, some 4-wheel drive, and some with 4-wheel steering. The last model (the F7500) was launched in 1978.Dumper Trucks
Muir-Hill came up with the concept of the dumper truck in 1927, effectively a Fordson tractor in reverse. The drivers seat was placed alongside the engine over the steering wheels (now the rear wheels), and a 2 cubic yard tipping bucket was mounted over the driven axle. The early versions of this 'dumping tractor' for sale in 1931 had to change wheels for use off-road or on road, but in 1933 new Dunlop low-pressure pneumatic tyres came available which removed this limitation, and the trucks by now known as Muir-Hill dumpers were rapidly adopted for construction work. Around 1932 the Fordson model F engine was replaced by the more powerful Fordson Model N engine (though still using petrol/TVO). By the 1937 Road and Transport Exhibition Boydell's Muir-Hill dumper range had expanded to handle 1 to 3 cubic yards. They all had gravity tip and all had pneumatic tyres. In addition they continued to market their type 45 loader, again based on the Fordson tractor. Muir-Hill continued dumper production through WW2, and supplied 14,000 to the Ministry of Supply (who were the purchasing agents for all government departments and the military). After the war a considerable number of these went back to Muir-Hill to be converted and resold for agricultural use as the 'Powercart'. This had the dumper bucket replaced by a flat bed tipper body, and had the seat rotated (so the back was towards the load), which allowed them to be registered for use on the road. Adverts for Muir-Hill Powercarts appeared from November 1946 through to April 1947. After the war Muir-Hill adopted a system whereby the drivers seat and controls could be rotated to face forward or backward. The presence of the forward control position allowed them to be road registered, and they were named 'HiWay' models to reflect that. In 1948 they exhibited 3 models, the 10B (2.5 to 3 cubic yards), 14B (3.5 to 4 cubic yards) and the 20B (5 to 6 cubic yards). The 10B used the four cylinder side-valve Ford E27N petrol/TVO engine and conventional dumper appearance. The 14B and 20B looked more like commercial vehicles with a cab, the 14B using a Perkins P6 oil engine, while the 20B had a 7.7litre AEC oil engine. They also produced a 10S model which was forward control, without the option to rotate the seat and controls to face the load. After the buy out by Wingets several smaller dumpers were added to the range, such as the Winget Muir-Hill 15cwt 2S, the 22cwt 3S, and the 30-cwt 4SR (which had rear wheel drive), the larger models were the 10B, 14B and 18B. They also builtFour-wheel-drive tractors
Muir-Hill launched their 4-wheel drive tractor in 1966, using a six-cylinder Ford 101hp industrial oil engine and Ford 5000 gearbox. The first model was called the 101 after the horsepower. The company's four-wheel-drive tractors with equal sized wheels by fitting a driven front axle running from output from a sandwich plate between the gearbox and rear axle casings. Because of the size of the axle this meant the whole tractor was raised considerably from standard height. However the traction gains were considerable (as with County and Roadless tractors) and Muir-Hills have been and are used for heavy draught applications, the manufacturer claiming the 101 could more than double your productivity. Tractor production continued with several higher power 4WD models until Babcock sold the tractor business in 1982. The four wheel drive range also included a range of Jib cranes from 1966, and the MH XL-200 20ton mobile crane, and the MH Four-5000 rough terrain forklift in 1980, and a wide range of loading shovels. The forklift was steered by central articulation. The A5000 loading shovel had 4WD and 4-wheel steer as well.Preservation of Early Examples
At least three Muir-Hill locomotives survive, two are at theReferences
Further reading
* Webb, Brian; ''The British Internal Combustion Locomotive 1894-1940'', David & Charles, * Gibbard, Stuart; ''Ford Tractor Conversions'', Old Pond Publishing Ltd (2003). * Bradley, Vic "Industrial Railways of North Wales" Colonel Stephens Railway Museum web siteExternal links
{{Commons category-inline, Muir-Hill tractors