Aveling & Porter

[castle261]

You can see the type of Aveling & Porter road roller, in the Brook at Chatham, next to the car park.
This is the type I saw, in 1936. The Scarifier, with the 3 Tines were placed at angle 11 to 5 (hours)

[MartinR]

(OT)The late lamented Fred Dibnah used to tell a hilarious tale about rollers and hills in his stage show "An Evening with Fred Dibnah".  He had used his roller with a trailer to go and collect some stone chimney "pots" from a location up a hill.  As he was returning downhill he noticed that "we were no longer on a roller, but on a sledge"!  At the foot of the hill was a sharp turn, the roller continued on through a field gate and embedded itself in the field snapping off the front roller as it did so.  A man from a local cottage appeared and asked Fred if he could take photos which Fred permitted with the proviso that he could have some prints.  A while later Fred went to the house and announced himself as "that pratt that parked a roller in your field".  The man replied that he was "that pratt that left the lens cap on"!

[DaveTheTrain]

Those tines or digging pins are part of a heavy device called a Scarifier.  The tines were wound down by a heavy iron handle on the offside road wheel, or roll.  Rolling on a hill was/is potentially risky due to the risk of a runaway, whereby the roller slides on the metal roll against the hard, slippery road surface.  Scarifying certainly would habe held them back. 

Avelings used to supply their own, or customers could order their Scrarifiers from two companies, either Price or Morrison and have them fitted by Aveling.


A typical scarified is shown here:




https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/File:Im1899TETv2-pm010.jpg


DTT

[castle261]

I used to see a similar steamroller digging up my road in the 1936 - the only item not shown is
the three diggers on the end of the roller. It stopped one morning right outside our house, and us lads gathered round the lamp post outside. As it was working up hill, a workman let down the
diggers by a screw type wheel. Crunch, they dug out the tared road, then a man with shovel
lifted it all up, into a waiting lorry. That was digging a trench for the main drainage - 1936 style.


                                                     That was an Aveling & Porter too

[Smiffy]

Restoration of an Aveling and Porter steam roller: