Case International MX100c suddenly pulls up

I have just had a experience with a MX100c Case International only the outcome was not too dramatic, I was towing a set of 24plate wheeled offset disks along a highway when the tractor stopped from 35 Klm"s/hour or 22MPH in a couple of yards, (that did unsettle me a little not knowing what the cause was) As I only had about 200yards or 200metres to travel, I fiddled around with the gears and checking for cars coming at me from behind I managed to get moving again slowly and drove the tractor the rest of the way into the site of the next job. When I pulled up the landowner who was expecting me came over and I started telling him what happened, between us we looked around the tractor and found smoke coming from the transmission breather at the back near the three point linkage, a phone call to the service manager of the local tractor dealer, brought him out to the farm and what he found was the shaft for the hand brake that goes through the transmission housing was sticking on, as these hand brakes work directly onto the pinion of the diff the effect is sudden when the brake heats up, the fact that the brake has not released is not easily noticed by the operator/driver because the handbrake lever is coupled to the transmission housing shaft by a flexible cable. when the handbrake lever is fully down and the light in the instrument panel goes out there is very little to indicate the problem apart from looking at the position of the shaft under the cab floor from the outside.
the tractor has to be split to repair this problem.

Cheers Arthur from Tassy