Hi Neil,
Alco is the Arthur Lyon Company, makers of generators and charging sets. It is wartime equipment, I have a smaller Alco set which has an overhead valve engine with their name on, but on dismantling I found it to actually be a J.A.P. engine, that one is an ex-Air Ministry charging set.
Going back to yours, it is very similar to the 1260 watt charging set, powered by a number of engines, J.A.P., Petter (I have one of those as well), Douglas, etc. The frame and dynamo look the same, but yours has the meters on the unit, where as the charging sets have a separate control cabinet as they charged banks of batteries. So, it looks like yours is a generator, what sort of output socket does it have?
The air filter is the same model as used on the BSA M20 and other motorcycles, it was also fitted to the Petter PU8 power unit, used for propelling pontoon bridges.
The Norman engine is not terribly common, but can occasionally be found at stationary engine displays at vintage rallies, incidentally, this is not the same Norman as the motor cycle maker of the same name.
Back in the 70's, I worked on a lot of this sort of equipment while working for REME, a good deal of it WW2 vintage and still a good back up of spares at that time.
Richard
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