A replica of a tracked road locomotive designed by Hornsby.
It was inspired by the only existing steam-powered Hornsby Chain Track Tractor, which was used from ca. 1910 onwards to supply the Klondike gold fields with coal, following the great Klondike Gold Rush in the Canadian Yukon Territory.
The limited number of such machines manufactured made it nearly impossible to recover and restore an original machine.
After many years of research, Franco decided to build one based only on construction drawings, pictures and descriptions that he managed to find in old specialised archives or through contacts with several steam enthusiasts from all over the world.
He started building it in 2011 and in May 2014, on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the Steam Engine Museum, the Risi Chain Track Tractor (this is how it was called) made its first public appearance, demonstrating to an audience of spectators, technicians and enthusiasts how steam was used in the past (initially not very successfully) also on tracked machines.
Even though it faced numerous challenges, the Risi Chain Track tractor is now on display, in perfect working order, at the museum complex along with all the other machines in the collection.
Following painstaking restoration, for this project Franco used the steam engine of a Reeves & Co (USA) road locomotive from the early 20th century and a locomotive-type boiler derived from a Breda (Italy) steamroller dating back to 1930.