Bristol 37 Tramp  J6912                              (c/n 5871)

                                 

                                    I am not sure if I should be putting up images of aircraft which did not actually fly (or why Bristol's
                                    back in the 1940s, would send me a photograph of a machine which never took to the air)?  What-
                                    ever, the Tramp was a post WW I transport development of the company's Breamar heavy bomber.
                                    Just as, after WW II, bombers such as the Lancaster and Halifax were converted to transports, so
                                    it was in 1918.  Incredibly, the concept for the Tramp was that it was to be powered by a steam
                                    turbine housed in an "engine room".  Power would then be transmitted through a series of transmission
                                    shafts and gears to the tractor airscrews.  In the event, two proof of concept examples were construct-
                                    ed and powered by four 230 h.p. Siddeley Puma engines housed in the fuselage engine room.   Such
                                    were the difficulties encountered with the clutches in the gear boxes connecting the airscrew shafts with
                                    the engines that neither of the two monsters were ever flight tested.  Too bad.  Perhaps this ingenious
                                    and courageous aircraft design deserved to have been continued, but the economics of the times just
                                    did not permit it.
                                    Johan Visschedijk of  http//www.1000aircraftphotos.com tells me that J6912 and J6913, (c/ns 5871
                                    and 5872 respectively) were built to Specifications 9/11 and 11/20, and were used as ground test rigs
                                    at Farnborough.