Castlerahan Vintage Club, located just outside Ballyjamesduff on the Cavan/Meath border, has refurbished a Ford 3600 that will be raffled to raise funds for the autism units in the local national schools.

Tickets for the draw are available for €10 each. The draw will take place at the club's field day which will be held at Castlerahan Community Centre on August 30.

One of the organisers, David Caffrey said: "Our main objective when we bought the old tractor last February was to try and raise a few quid for the autism unit in Castlerahan National School and Knocktemple National Schools.

"Money was raised to buy the tractor from the club members loaning money to the club to fund the project.

"Anything from €100 to several thousand euro was loaned on a short term basis by the members," he recalled.

The tractor was bought in early February in south Co. Kildare as a project.

Caffrey explained: "Our aim was to have it out and respectable looking for St Patrick's day when we started to sell the first tickets.

"There were many late nights between then and March 17 to get the tractor home and into club founder, Tommy Reilly's shed.

"We needed to get to work on stripping down the engine, giving it the full once over, cleaning down the chassis and back end, and replacing any damaged or worn parts.

"Several undercoats of paint were applied. We then finally finished the chassis and back end with a two pack paint."

According to Caffrey, the cab also needed "a little TLC" too but, as time was scarce, a local panel beater was given the job of spraying all the cab doors, bonnet and dash.

"We were building it back together while constantly on the phone to John Conaty tractor breakers, who kindly sponsored us all the new spares parts we needed."

While the vintage club members eventually got the cab on and all the other resprayed parts, none of them knew how to reglaze the cab.

"As luck would have it, a pure gentleman, Hank, a retired Dutch man living beside our chairman Michèal McGinn was approached and asked to help," Caffrey said.

''He kindly agreed so it was great to get that extra little help and get all the glass back in place without any little accidents."

St Patrick's Day

The vintage club took part in the three local St Patrick's Day parades: Kilnaleck, Ballyjamesduff and Oldcastle. 

After that, the tractor went back to the shed again where all the wiring was completed, the cab re-upholstered and all the little snags addressed.

The decision was made to attend local shows and venues to sell tickets for the raffle.

"This soon escalated and we found ourselves out every weekend sometimes two and three days.

"We really turned heads, from the Ice Expo to Full of the Pipe and Cowboys and Heroes along with Sammy's launch day with Bertie in Aghamullan.

"We still have a few big shows to do and we're getting invited to more every weekend, but unfortunately we can't get to them all," Caffrey said.

Vintage club field day

Events lined up for their field day include a tractor balancing competition, a dyno to check the horse power, and a tyre wars competition.

Caffrey said: "We're having a line up of Ford tractors, possibly a world record,"

"Along with that we're having a vintage section for cars, trucks, bikes and tractors, with a vintage run on the day. 

"We're having a truck show and shine that's gathered great momentum at the minute.

"We will have threshing, music, Irish dancing and will hopefully be serving boxty donated by Drummully Boxty. There will be an action packed programme of events," Caffrey added.