page_title: Frank Bottrill
section_title: Engineer and inventor
hierarchical_section_title: Frank Bottrill / Engineer and inventor
caption_attribution_description: English: "Big Lizzie", a large tractor/truck, at en:Red Cliffs, Victoria
context_page_description: Frank Bottrill was an Australian blacksmith and inventor, known for his giant "Big Lizzie" traction engine, thought to be at one time the largest in the world. It had a unique variant of the Dreadnaught Wheel design. Alternating bearing plates gave support to each wheel, allowing it to travel over soft ground without bogging down.
  This was an early attempt to solve the problem that was later addressed more effectively by the caterpillar track. After running into financial difficulty, Bottrill spent the later part of his working life clearing bush and hauling loads in the west of New South Wales and Victoria. Big Lizzie has been preserved, and stands in a small park in Red Cliffs, Victoria.
context_section_description: In 1846 James Boydell had obtained a patent in Britain for a steam traction engine with "Dreadnaught Wheels", where each wheel had hinged plates attached loosely at regular intervals around the outside of the rim. Each plate in turn would lie flat on the ground as the wheel rolled over it, providing better support in muddy or sandy ground.
  Bottrill heard of Boydell's system, and in 1906 filed a patent for an improved design.
  He used crossed wire ropes to attach the "bearer" shoes to the wheel rims. 
  The plates alternated on each side of the rim, which was split, to give a smoother ride. 
  Bottrill's "Dreadnaught" or "Ped-rail" patent was approved on 6 September 1907.
  He installed his dreadnaught wheels on two McLaren steam traction engines between 1906 and 1910.
  Bottrill moved to Victoria in 1908, and joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church in Ballarat.
  On 31 March 1909 he married Margaret Young, a bible worker with the church.
  Botrill moved to South Melbourne, where he collaborated with the A. H. McDonald company as an engineer as well as a blacksmith.
  The Mount Gunson copper mines in South Australia bought the first set of Dreadnaught wheels on a tractor built by Austral Otis with a forty-horsepower twin-cylinder McDonald engine. It was tested in swampy land near the Austral Otis works in August 1911,
  then dismantled and shipped to Hummock Hill (now Whyalla), where Frank and Reuben Bottril re-assembled the tractor and drove it to Port Augusta, South Australia.
  For a while Bottril's pedrails were offered as an optional feature by McDonald's on their farm and industrial tractors.
  They were used on tractors in Cloncurry, Queensland, mines.
  In 1913 McDonald's won contracts to build two tractors with pedrails for Commonwealth Railways, who were building a section of the Trans-Australian Railway across the Nullarbor desert. Reuben Bottril brought the tractors into operation. He wrote to his brother,
  When at the 132 miles [mark] I had an inch of rain to contend with and at the time it came on there were two large claypans (like glue) and a salt lake to contend with too – directly in front of me. For the next two days I travelled only four miles, but I got past the claypans and lake and got into heavy sand with the one mile gear on all the time for about 12 miles. The last three days of return trip I did 13.17 and 15.5 miles respectively. I think this tractor has proved itself very suitable to the Com' during this trip, especially after getting past those gluepots with an inch of rain there. 
  Botrill's patented wheels were also used on "Big Lizzie", a huge traction engine which McDonald's built to his design in 1915. 
  Big Lizzie could carry almost 90 tons when two trailers were attached.
  There were just six bearers on each wheel, compared to Bottril's earlier designs which had as many as twelve bearers. This placed more strain on the cables retaining the bearers, and had the effect of reducing the tractor's speed to one mile per hour.  Big Lizzie was awkward to manoeuvre, with a turning radius of 200 feet (61 m).
caption: "Big Lizzie" on 14 August 2009 at Red Cliffs, Victoria, Australia
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