Transport and plant/equipment used in/on Snowy Scheme

Plush Interior with the fairly basic gearbox and aux. box.




Photos by Phil Rye

I think the Antars went in the late 60s, I was involved with an attempt by the HCVA in Sydney to get one preserved. I think they went to the coal mine at Burrorgarang/Glenlee, and a few years later what was left of them was dumped in a scrap yard near Narellan.

..you couldn't get any better than that Bruehawk...maybe a replica number plate would be allowable for display purposes. Thanks and Cheers to you and Phil.

...PS .. that style of plate might have been the one with the star ??

The SMA obtained 3 Thornycroft Mighty Antars that were fitted with Rover petrol V8 engines, these were soon replaced with Rolls Royce Diesel engines.

I think that the SMA probably had no further use for them by the late 60s but the Commonwealth Government stepped in & with held any possible sale considering these vehicles to be of a defence aid if needed until they were finally disposed of in the early 70s to an Australian buyer with the proviso that they were not to leave the country.

I'll have a look this weekend when I get home as I've got various articles on the SMA vehicle fleet that I've accumulated over the years.

Regards
Rob W

Rover engines in Antars
Read with interest about the Antars that came out here to work on the Snowy, fitted firstly with the V8 Rover petrol engines, before being retro fitted with R/R diesels. I reckon I had read somewhere or other about that engine being a cut down, or at least a derivative of the famous Merlin V12 engine, that engine having been made by quite a few different manufacturers during WW2, including Packard in the U.S. When in V8 guise, it was called I think, the Meteor, an engine that was to be produced in both petrol and diesel formats. I'm wondering what particular Rover vehicle would have been in mind for that size engine, it was after all a large lump of iron, 18 litres. Given that wartime England used every manufacturer/engine builder it could enlist, lots of different companies were engaged in sometimes non related work outside their normal activities.
Going back a while, I may have (mistakenly) declared that Antars may have used Meadows engines, both diesel and petrol. I think I may have been getting confused with the large Scammells, who apparently weren't all that fussy what engines they ran. Again, or so I have been informed, Scammells at one time or another used AEC, Leyland,Cummins, Meadows, Rolls Royce and so on. Whether they used the Rover V8 petrol, if indeed it was the Meteor, I haven't been able to confirm. Curious to know if the Snowy Antars which were retro fitted with R/R engines were the Meteor engines?
Dave_64

The Rolls Royce Meteor was a twelve cylinder engine developed from the Merlin for use as a tank engine and was used in the centurion as well as other british tanks. The merlin was super charged the meteor had supercharger removed and produced 600 bhp. I believe it was also called the Rover Meteor. Regards Ralph

A bit of searching tells me Rover built Meteor's for Rolls Royce.

So strictly speaking it isn't a Rover engine, rather an engine built by Rover.

If it were the V8 the Antars would never have moved even downhill.

Would there have been room in the engine bay for a V12?

More searching (Wikipedia) tells us this-

Origins[edit]

The civilian version of the Antar was developed in the late 1940s as an oilfield vehicle for transporting pipes over rough ground.[1] They were of 6×4 layout (i.e. six wheels, four of them driven), with the front (steering) axle undriven and with twin wheels on both driven (rear) axles (technically ten wheels, eight of them driven, as each rear axles has four wheels). The vehicle was designed from the outset for off-road use, like the earlier Scammell Pioneer and unlike the road-going Diamond T it was eventually to replace.

The engine, the Meteorite, was a cut-down V8 version of the V12 Rolls-Royce Meteor used in tanks, itself a terrestrial version of the Merlin and made under licence by the Rover Co Ltd. Early Antars used the petrol version made by Rover and by the early 1950s the Rolls-Royce-manufactured diesel versions of the engine

There's about half a dozen pages with pics on the AULRO forum, some great pics
there.

www.aulro.com/afvb/series-i-land-rover-e...-snowy-vehicles.html

Also more pics and info regarding some of those pics to found here, click on the camera icons
on the left of the page.

tlf.dlr.det.nsw.edu.au/learningobjects/C...24/object/r2906.html

DNO M80 Thanx fir the link
























cya