The historic Yorkshire 'waggon' which sold for more than £120,000 at auction

Imagine it, too, ferrying huge sections of stainless steel chain on an eight-hour trek from Sheffield to St Paul’s Cathedral to wrap around the dome cracked by a German bomb in the early days of the Second World War.

The steel was transported nearly 200 miles in those pre-motorway days by its last commercial owners, Brown Bayleys Steel, founded in Leeds Road, Sheffield, by George Brown in 1871.

Readers may wonder about spelling the word waggon with two Gs.

That's because the makers of the 1928 Sentinel "Super" Steam Waggon used the variation as a marketing tactic, to distinguish their vehicles from rivals, the double G intending to suggest their lorries were superior.

Sentinel Waggon Works, based first in Glasgow, then, from 1918, in Shrewsbury, Shropshire, first produced steam road vehicles in 1905 and introduced the "Super" model in 1923, its high-pressure superheated boiler enabling speeds up to 60mph.

A collector's item, naturally, and the rarity illustrated above - its apple-green green livery emblazoned with original owners "George Senior & Sons Ltd. Ponds Forge, Sheffield" - fetched a whopping £123,800 at specialist auctioneers Cheffins of Cambridge.

Getting the old beauty up and running, though, was always a daunting operation.

A long list of instructions include filling the bunker through the cab roof, topping up the water tanks, unhooking the ashpan, cleaning out the fire grate, half-filling the ashpan with water, lifting the stoking shute lid, lighting some shavings or waste soaked in paraffin and nail-free wood in the grate, shutting off water gauge cocks, opening the drain....

And all that's before actually starting her up, a procedure involving levers, foot throttle valve and a further complication when a speed of 8-10mph is reached.

The instructions drone on: "The best throttle position will readily be found - excessive opening will only waste steam and draw the fire into holes, cause the emission of sparks and leave no head of steam when a hill is encountered".

One final hurdle: the driver has to come to a stop before changing gear. How that works I have no idea. Definitely not a vehicle for the Sunday driver....

The Sentinel's first owner, George Senior (1838-1915), was an interesting chap, with a classic rags-to-riches back story.

He started out as a nail maker in his father's workshop at the age of eight before becoming an apprentice "hammer man" aged 13.

"Our George", as the steel man was affectionately known, went into business for himself in 1872 at Pond's Forge, becoming an alderman, a Master Cutler and, in 1901, Lord Mayor of Sheffield.

The 1928 Sentinel sold at Cheffins moved from George Senior's to the ownership of a firm of Rotterdam steel stockbrokers, then to Brown Bayleys Steel in Sheffield, retiring from service in 1959.

But the lorry avoided the scrapheap to be lovingly restored by Yorkshireman Harold Bell from 1980, travelling more than 10,000 miles from 1986 in a decade under his ownership.

Further meticulous restoration was carried out by the vendor before its sale.

Star of the show, though, was a 1928 Foden D-Type steam tractor-wagon "Perseverance" which went for more than £305,000.

First owned by the Watkins family of haulage operators in Wales, it was requisitioned for use in pulling down bomb-damaged buildings in London during the war.

Bearing the name "Crown Steam Haulage, Peterborough", the fully-restored vehicle was built by the company bearing the name of Edwin Foden (1841-1911), who left school at 13, started a small engineering company near Sandbach, Cheshire, and designed his first steam tractor in 1901.

A 1919 International Mogul 10-20 single cylinder tractor went for £55,000, an International Titan 10-20 two cylinder petrol-paraffin one from 1915-1922 £11,000, a Rumely oil-pull Type X two cylinder an identical sum, a 1929 Wallis-Massey Harris four cylinder petrol model £8,250, a 1949 Massey Harris four cylinder diesel £8,800 and a 1951 Ferguson - a "little grey Fergie" just like the one I used to drive as a boy around my father's Norfolk farm - for £14,300.

A final word on the Foden, Sentinel and lorries like them.... Glorious relics of a forgotten age, they dominated commercial transport on Britain's roads for four decades, from the abandonment in 1896 of a man walking ahead of a vehicle waving a red flag until new legislation forced the development of lighter lorries.

But, thanks to painstaking restoration, a few can still be seen in all their finery at steam fairs throughout Britain and Europe.