A W Chesher has lived in Bedfordshire all his life, and has seen great changes in the countryside since the start of the century. He accepts that its increasing industrialisation is an inevitable by-product of modern progress, but bitterly regrets the decline of the steam traction engine.

When he was younger, he saw traction engines everywhere: threshing corn, ploughing fields, acting as road locomotives on the highways. Now, he doesn't believe there's a single one working in the county. His family has long been associated with traction engines, ever since his great-grandfather bought one at the 1851 Great Exhibition. Mr Chesher first drove one at sixteen, and was familiar with every one in the district.

Many of Mr Chesher's paintings are based on his detailed memories of long-defunct traction engines. He shows his first oil painting, of his birthplace, incorporating a traction engine, whose driver is being consulted by Chesher's father, and himself as a young boy. Other paintings incorporate engines branded 'The Wallis Tractor' and 'T.W.Knowlton Haulage Contractor'. He reminisces about the incident that inspired the latter painting. 43 years earlier, the 'Aquitania' was transporting a large boiler to a brewery, and the engine wheels came onto the cobblestones and slipped. Mr Knowlton, the owner, is depicted talking to the police.

The painting 'Returning Empty' shows a Sentinel steam wagon fitted with a vertical boiler and a twin-cylinder enclosed engine. They travelled at up to 20 miles per hour. Another picture shows a mineral water wagon, hauled by a Foden engine in the Cotswolds. A steam ploughing scene shows a Howard vehicle from the 1870s whose engine was placed in the tender alongside the driver. A similar scene shows two ploughing engines at work, dragging the plough back and forth between them. A picture of an 1851 summer evening depicts a man having bought an engine and threshing machine from the exhibition. Another painting shows the last working engine in Bedfordshire, pulling a threshing machine and chaff cutter - Mr Chesher could still see it working up to the 1950s.

Mr Chesher talks about his painting routine. First of all he covers the tablecloth with waterproof mackintosh, at the insistence of his wife. He describes how he's known as a 'primitive painter' in London, but he's not bothered by this: he paints as a hobby, and if people like the work, that's fine by him. He had art lessons at school, but this was so long ago that he considers himself self-taught. His overwhelming priority in a painting is to depict the traction engines as accurately as possible, and cites Constable and Canaletto as his inspirations. He paints by the light of an overhead 100-watt bulb. To date, he has painted 70 pictures, and has no intention of giving up for at least another decade.

His favourite period is the World War I era, when traction engines were particularly busy, often being used for military purposes, to transport heavy equipment. A picture shows a 1915 engine baling hay for the Army, with land girls and members of the Royal Army Service Corps' Forage Department. Large quantities of hay were needed for horses, and fairground engines were redeployed to pull timber. They were also extensively used in food production, often operated by German prisoners of war.

Mr Chesher hopes that his paintings will help traction engines live on, but he's very conscious that visual art cannot reproduce the smells or the sounds. He claims the drivers used to regard the engines as their children, and thinks that the countryside isn't the same without them.

Several traction engines put on a display in a field.