Life By The Sea: Part Three - A New Millennium

The third and final part of the late Donald Bowler’s feature on life boat launching tractors sees him look at the latest technology employed by the RNLI, as well as the machines used at independent life boat stations up and down the country.

During the run of 21 tracked Talus MBH tractors, and after completion of County 764-based Talus 764 TW15 in 1987, in 1991 the RNLI started taking delivery of a purpose-built four-wheel drive centre-pivot tractor, the Talus MB-4H, the first one being TW16H (H610 SUJ).

The 9.8-tonne, 105hp turbocharged four-cylinder Caterpillar 4114-powered Talus MB-4H has hydraulic drive to each wheel and each of the 32 MB-4H tractors are used for working with the Atlantic class lifeboats. The tractors started service in mid 1991, with the final one, TW62H (DX59 HLZ), being supplied in 2009. The MB-4H has a drawbar pull of five-six tonnes and a winch wire pull of five tonnes, via its hydraulic winch.

The development work to develop a suitable vehicle was contracted out to M A Bigland Ltd. (now known as Clayton Engineering Ltd.), who had also converted the County 764 tractors. Development was undertaken at its test facility at Knighton, Powys and the prototype tested at various RNLI stations. The driving seat can face either direction and there is a steering wheel and hand and foot controls for each direction. Maximum wading depth is 1.6m, but if the tractor gets into trouble the hatches can be closed and the tractor recovered at next low tide.

As the tractor is designed to be equally effective in both directions, the ‘front’ pair of tyres are fitted the ‘wrong way’ around, whichever direction the tractor is travelling. The winch is fitted at the cab end, so that when a lifeboat trailer is being recovered, the driver can see the winch cable hook approaching, and watch as the trailer is automatically coupled to the tractor’s towing hitch. Bigland also made the launch trailers on which the lifeboats are mounted.