Road construction equipment books - history and technology

Classic American Steamrollers 1871-1935 Photo Archive

Thrilling photos of the great steam-powered machines that shaped America's highways and other paved spaces. For the first time, read about all 30 recognized makes of steamrollers built in North America. Fans of Baker, Birdsall, Buffalo-Pitts, Case, Enright, Geiser, Gorton, Heilman, Huber, Kelly, Leader, Port Huron, Robert Bell, Russell, & Waterous farm engines will find them among the road rollers shown.

See the development of North American rollers from Abbot Q Ross' first 3-wheel roller of 1871 through the last Buffalo-Springfield steamroller of 1935. You'll be fascinated by the depth of information.

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Road Rollers

In the nineteenth century, it became obvious that the UK's road system needed to be improved. Smoother roads were required to allow people to travel faster and more safely, and the engineers went to work to make this possible. In this book, author Anthony Coulls looks at one of the best known ways of doing this: the road roller.

The first road rollers were horse-drawn and these were followed in 1865 by the steam-powered road roller, which was seen on British roads for more than a century. Aveling & Porter of Rochester was the firm that dominated the steam roller market, although several other manufacturers made plenty. As technology improved, rollers began to get lighter and new forms of propulsion came in - petrol and diesel engines.

Even though a road roller today will be one of these more modern types, the term 'steam roller' is a firm part of the public's imagination. The appeal of the steam roller means that hundreds survive to this day in the hands of enthusiasts, who take them to steam rallies up and down the country, and petrol and diesel rollers have great appeal too.

From the earliest steam rollers to classic diesel and petrol rollers, this book presents the history of these popular road-making machines and their accessories. This volume is part of the Britain's Heritage series, which provides definitive introductions to the riches of Britain's past, and is the perfect way to get acquainted with road rollers in all their variety.

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Roadbuilding Construction Equipment at Work: Building the early interstate highways through New England's Green Mountains

This photo essay details the construction of the original Interstate Highway System in Vermont's picturesque and largely rural mountainous region through the late 1950s to late '70s. During this short time, contractor driven construction equipment innovation was remarkable: 2-1/2 cubic yard shovels were replaced with 4-8 yard shovels and then by massive wheel loaders up to 17 cubic yards; 15-22 ton rock trucks were upped to 50 tons; rudimentary spreading methods - with dump trucks using tailgate chains - were replaced with CMI Autogrades; and many contractors devised and built ingenious contraptions to increase production.

The work attracted many large established road building firms from other States - Lane, Perini, Palazzi, L. G. Defelice, Green Construction from Des Moines, Iowa, as well as Cartier Construction, a division of McNamara from Montreal - seen here clearing and grubbing, pioneering, rock drilling, mucking peat bogs, and excavation sequences including trucks and shovels, loaders, pan scrapers, and a wheel excavator.
The manufacturers of construction equipment constitute a virtual directory of the period; Caterpillar, Euclid, Allis-Chalmers, International, Dart, P&H, Bucyrus-Erie, Northwest, Lorain, Lima, Gradall, Barber-Greene, Blaw Knox, CMI, and more.

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Steam Rollers in Preservation

NEW

Steam rollers were first developed in the 1860s. Thomas Aveling refined the most common design, featuring a large steerable roll at the front and two rolls at the rear. His company, Aveling & Porter, became the leading manufacturer of steam rollers, although other traction engine builders also produced various designs, some of which were quite innovative.
Steam rollers were the last steam-powered road vehicles to be widely used, with some remaining in operation until the mid-1960s. As a result, many have been preserved and are frequently displayed at rallies and events.

This book showcases a variety of steam rollers from different manufacturers that can be seen in Britain and provides a detailed account of their history and preservation.

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Hamm - Mehr als 100 Jahre Strassenwalzen aus Tirschenreuth

Road rollers have been manufactured in Tirschenreuth in Upper Palatinate (Bavaria) for longer than anywhere else in the world. Reason enough, then, to present this interesting story in detail in words and pictures.

The author, who grew up not far from Tirschenreuth, was fascinated by all kinds of construction machinery as a teenager. However, he was particularly taken with the Hamm rollers, which are omnipresent on the construction sites in his region. He began photographing the machines early on and collecting everything that had to do with the motor rollers.
With these documents and with the help of the machine books and machine lists that document the sale of all Hamm rollers since the 1920s, Alfred Meyer wrote this extensively researched and meticulously edited work.

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