Bob, who is an acknowledged Fordson enthusiast, took on the project as one of the most challenging restoration jobs that he had embarked upon.

The tractor was a 1930s Fordson Model N, around which a Howard trencher had been built for land drainage works.

Bob believes that the trencher saw some service during World War II, helping to create airstrips for the British Air Force.

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The tractor is unusual in many respects as it is possibly one of the earliest of these trencher conversions that were done in collaboration between Ford and Howard. This close tie between these companies was to last right through to the 1980s.

The tractor was given to Bob as a challenge by his friend, the late Alex Hutcheson, and Michael Hoey, both members of the Fingal Vintage Society.

Alex spotted it on a visit to England where it had been sold but the buyer failed to collect it. Once a year had passed, Alex went back for the tractor and arranged for its delivery to his yard and then on to Bob, who lives in Skerries, Co Dublin.

Three years

The work associated with its restoration to working condition has taken Bob almost three years.

The tractor engine was largely replaced with an E27N engine that he had bought at the Newark Show in England.

This, coupled with supplies from Bob’s extensive collection of Fordson tractor parts, were called into action.

These included one of the last few radiators that he secured from a radiator factory that closed in Ballinasloe in the 1990s.

New manifolds were used and the covers were either repaired or replaced with new ones.

The track system, called the Rotoped system, required huge work. The tracks were removed and the system heated over days in order to free up some of the pins.

The track system uses 72ft of chains to allow the machine almost walk across the fields. As part of his input into the restoration of this wonderful tractor, the late Alex Hutcheson funded a full set of new roller chains.

The challenge was to get the machine into action doing what is was designed to do.

Bob, with the support of his friends at the Fingal Vintage Society, achieved that last autumn and the Fordson cut a 3ft trench to prove that point.

Bob feels that it would be impossible to put a cost on the restoration process.

“Sometimes I think that I must have been mad, drunk or a genius to take it on,” he said.

The latter is surely the case as the tractor not only looks like its original form, but it can now dig a trench in the way that it was originally designed to do.