After seeing the steam ploughing at South Croxton working weekend, we heard that there was to be a big steam ploughing event, to celebrate 40 years of the Steam Plough Club and 100 years of steam ploughing at Beeby's. The Beeby brothers of Rempstone, on the Leicestershire / Nottinghamshire border, owned 11 sets of ploughing engines for contract work and are still involved in the hobby. The Challenge aimed to have 13 sets of engines ploughing, along with tractors and other displays - for full details, see the Steam Plough Club website. The weather was perfect, and Jim, Andy and I spent the day watching the events and taking pictures and video. Of course, it is impossible to give any idea of the scale, as the ploughing engines were spread out over two vast fields, but I hope my pictures will give some insight into the event.

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Fowler engine and plough		Everyone helps to polish the engine up ready for the challenge
14hp boiler for a Fowler single cylinder engine undergoing restoration	Fowler engine 2528, an ex-Beeby engine - an on-going project	A stubble field, ready to be ploughed by steam
Daniels Brothers McClaren engine, up from Cornwall for this event
	This McClaren engine was a super-quiet runner
	This team had a little trouble with their plough cable and had to completely rewind it

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	Photos by Dolly

© Dolly French 2006