THE Citizen has consulted historians to help a reader in his quest for knowledge about a military machine he once worked on at Leyland Motors.

Colin Thirlwall, a former apprentice for the firm, wrote to ask 'whatever happened to the FV1200?'

The machine was an enormous tractor used for pulling artillery. Only two were ever built, both at Leyland Motors.

According to military historian Pat Ware, the FV1200 was a monster machine typical of the period it was built.

Just after the end of the Second World War the army was desperate to upgrade its machines.

The FV1200 was designed to pull guns, and act as a recovery vehicle and was originally to be 10 tons. By 1949, however, it had grown into a whopping 30-ton beast.

Originally 560 were planned, at a cost of around £11,000 each, but in the end only two were ever built.

Workers were transferred from Leyland Motors to the Ministry of Supply Factory in Farington to work on the machine, alongside engineers building top secret parts for the Centurion tank.

Mr Ware, author of Tugs of War, a book about military machines, said: "It was symptomatic of designing things without regard to cost -- the country was more or less bankrupt in the early fifties. It was just like an overblown Tonka Toy -- rounded, with massive wheels, and enormously wide. Everything about it was in huge proportions."

At the time there were no motorways, so the FV1200 was moved around the country on normal roads.

The legal width for civilian vehicles was seven feet six inches, and the FV1200 was twice as wide again.

But, despite the hard work put into it by so many local workers, the FV1200 had no future.

In the end, the mighty FV1200 was replaced by the Thorneycroft 'Mighty Antar.'

Mr Ware added: "It's a shame, but they were both broken up.

"These days we tend to preserve everything but sadly that was not the case then. Both of them ended up in a scrapyard in Surrey."