Maumee Valley Antique Steam & Gas Association
31st Annual Show, August, 2008

Jefferson Township Park, New Haven, Indiana

All Photographs Copyright © 2008-2011 by Robert E Pence
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Wheat for threshing demonstrations.

A very old wooden threshing machine.

The sawmill will operate almost continuously during the show.

Allen County Blacksmiths will demonstrate their skills in the blacksmith building.

Boiler being rebuilt to provide steam for stationary engines displayed inside the building.

Corliss-valve steam engine originally built to generate electricity. The generator has been stripped of its windings and pole pieces.

The engine in the foreground is a steam-powered air compressor.

This 125-horsepower Buckeye Oil Engine originally ran a generator beneath the Grabill Grain Company. It's a semi-diesel engine; a hot pin in the
cylinder head has to be heated with a gas torch before the engine can be started. Once running, combustion keeps the pin hot to ignite the fuel.

This year's show featured Oliver and its ancestors and acquisitions and welcomed any other brands that showed up.

I never saw one of these before. I apologize for the beheadings.

Oliver puchased Cleveland Tractor Company and adopted its line of Cletrac crawler tractors.

I don't recall ever before seeing an Oliver crawler tractor as big as this one.

Evidence of Oliver's purchase of Hart-Parr, of Charles City, Iowa, to obtain a tractor line.

Hart-Parr was a pioneer in the internal combustion tractor business. Their Model 30-60, represented here by this one built in 1913, became known as
"Old Reliable" because its simplicity and solid construction made it serviceable for farmers who had little experience with internal combustion
technology. The 30-60 model designation indicates 30 horsepower at the drawbar and 60 horsepower on the belt.

The tractor appears primitive by contemporary standards, but that was a positive attribute because all critical components were simple and easily
accessible without expensive or complicated tools. The engine had two cylinders and was governed by the hit-and-miss method; instead of controlling
speed with a butterfly-type throttle valve, the governor cut off fuel and ignition when the engine reached the desired speed and let the engine coast until
the speed dropped below the selected setting.

The big gasoline/kerosene tractors were bought mainly by very large farmers who could afford their high price and could use their power, and whose
fields were large enough to maneuver them.

Technology advances, especially in metallurgy during, and partly induced by, World War I, led to the
development of more compact, lighter engines which soon were adapted to farm power. Tractors
became smaller, more durable and more affordable and found their way onto smaller farms where
they replaced horses.

Like some other makers, even as they evolved more compact machines Hart-Parr stayed with their
proven two-cylinder engine designs, partly because they were less expensive to make than four-cylinder
engines. Their characteristic exhaust bark could be heard for miles across the quiet countryside, and
Hart-Parr was long one of the esteemed brands among those able and willing to pay for top quality.

Most Hart-Parr tractors of the late teens through the 1920s were two-cylinder models, but there were two four-cylinder models, the 22-40 and the 28-50.
On all these two- and four-cylinder tractors the cylinders were horizontal with the cylinder heads facing the operator's platform and the crankshaft parallel
to the rear axle. The four-cylinder tractors were built by bolting two two-cylinder blocks to a four-cylinder crankcase. According to Roger Schuller, only 500
22-40 models were built and only the first 100 of this series had separate caburetors for the two cylinder blocks.

Under Oliver's ownership Hart-Parr tractors came to conform to then-contemporary design standards that were common among competitors.

Hart-Parr and Oliver tractors were re-branded for Canadian farm-equipment maker Cockshutt.

Leroy Perman's plowing demonstrations with his Twin City KT are a long-standing tradition at this show.

Huber, long known for road-building machinery and their return-flue steam traction engines, got into
the tractor business post-WWI with running gear purchased from Foote Brothers Gear Company and
engines bought from others. In the early 1920s They sold two models of this type, a 12-25 horsepower
Light Four with a Waukesha engine and this 15-30 horsepower Super Four with a Midwest engine.

Collection and restoration of vintage garden tractors is a growing hobby. These machines are readily transportable and don't require a lot of space to
store or heavy machinery to work on.

Corn-shelling setup.

Nice Minneapolis-Moline Model R - just the right size for a utility tractor.

Non-feature tractors - manufacturers other than Oliver, Hart-Parr, Nichols & Shepard and other associated makes.

Ford Motor Company's Fordson was one of the small, affordable tractors that brought internal combustion to small farms and began to displace
animal-powered agriculture.

It's a rare antique tractor show, county fair or small-town festival that doesn't feature a tractor pull.

The advent of mechanized grain-threshing equipment in the 1850s brought about the increase in sizes
of grain farms and the evolution of threshing machines and farms kept pace with each other. The
machines grew from hand-powered versions to ones powered with horses on treadmills or walking
in circles on sweeps. By the 1880s, the newest machines required more power than was practicable
with horses, and steam power began to appear on farms.

The earliest steam engines in agricultural use were mounted on wheels but had to be pulled from
one job site to another with horses. Ron Narhwold's beautiful 1890 Nichols & Shepard engine is an
example of the early adaptation of self- propulsion. These machines were built to move themselves
and their threshing machine, but not suited for heavy field tillage. Nichols & Shepard was bought by
s Oliver to obtain parts of their line of very high quality harvesting machinery.

1917 double-cylinder 20-75 horsepower Nichols & Shepard steam traction engine. Most steam engines apply pressure to the piston in both directions
on every revolution, so a single-cylinder double-acting steam engine produces as many power strokes per revolution as a four-cylinder, four-cycle
internal combustion engine. This double-cylinder engine produces as many power strokes per revolution as an eight-cylinder automobile engine.

Again, as threshing machines grew and as other applications like local sawmills expanded and
enlarged, steam engines grew to meet the demand. David Pence's 1913 Frick engine is
considerably heavier and larger than the engines of the 19th century. This engine had not run in many
years until this summer, when David finished a detailed mechanical restoration, including a new all-
welded boiler certified for operation at 175 pounds of steam per square inch. This engine is better
than new because of more advanced metallurgy in the materials used in restoration. Frick was a
cut above many of its contemporary competitors in mechanical design and manufacturing quality.

Steam plowing was practiced mostly on the huge wheat farms of the western prairies, and even there it was often done only to break tough virgin
prairie sod, by contractors hired by farmers. Subsequent plowing often was done with horses, both because of the great cost and labor demands
of steam poweer and because farmers were wary of the soil compaction resulting from repeated use of these machines that often weigh 15 or 20 tons or more.

Trent Smith feeds water into the boiler of his Advance-Rumely engine.

The era around World War I, when these engines were built, was probably the zenith of steam traction engine development. The machines were rugged
and powerful, and properly-maintained and -operated boilers were safe from explosion. Those glory days were short; the introduction of affordable,
compact, economical gasoline and kerosene tractors came immediately upon the heels of the war, and by the 1920s most farm machinery makers had
quit building steamers altogether. A handful of small foundry/machine-shop operators continued building them on a limited basis into the 1930s.

These machines and events will be sustained by the young people who take part and learn.

Steam power held on in sawmills longer than in many other applications, because of the abundance
of free fuel in the form of slabwood and scrap. Most shows still feature sawmill demonstrations, and
because the engines are sitting in one place while doing their work, the sawmills provide good
opportunities to get up close and see the machinery at work and see what operators have to do to
provide steady, reliable, safe power.

Here, a 65-horspower Case engine built in 1917 is up to full operating pressure and standing by until the sawyer is ready to start.

Threshing machines and wagonloads of wheat lined up for threshing demonstrations.

Belting up the Hart-Parr 30-60 to thresh.

Theshing power provided by a 12-24 two-cylinder Hart-Parr tractor.

Threshing wheat - the bundles go into the feeder with the grain heads facing the machine. The whirling knives cut the strings, a spinning toothed
cylinder knocks the kernels out of the hulls, and shaking screens and controlled air from fans separate the grain from everything else.

Mark Schuller, atop the threshing machine, uses his eyes and ears to detect malfunctions or clogs.
It's a lot easier to unclog a machine if you stop feeding it right away than if you let it get packed full of
straw from end to end.

Everything that isn't wheat comes out here -- straw, chaff, ticks and chiggers ...

Baling straw from threshing

Don't worry about having to go hungry at the show. This line is for fish or tenderloin dinners catered by Country Chef.

Standard festival fare, some with a home-grown twist ...

Steamed sweet corn, a popular tradition at some shows, attracts a line, too.

A nice lineup of fine vintage and collectible cars and restored trucks.

Simplex

Ford Model T - this one had a Frontenac head, a cylinder-head conversion that provided overhead
valves and boosted performance substantially.

1928 Ford Model A Coupe

1931 Ford Phaeton with right-hand drive.

Auburn Speedster, built in nearby Auburn, Indiana.

'59 Edsel Station Wagon, a rarity. I was around when these were still being built, and attended the grand opening of the Edsel dealer in Fort Wayne,
but I remember seeing only one of these before this one.

A very nice exhibit of vintage and classic trucks: I don't think there are too many Diamond-T pickups around; this is only the second one I've seen. It
looks like a rugged vehicle.

International Harvester half-ton pickup; I think this is about a 1951 model.

Hendrickson

Beautifully crafted working scale models of antique gas engines.

The most-often asked question of gas engine exhibitors is, "What does it do?" This is a good
demonstration of one of the farm tasks sometimes done by gas engines, pumping water. Other jobs
were shelling corn, grinding livestock feed, and powering a washing machine.

Blacksmiths demonstrate their craft and offer their products for sale.

Friday night's entertainment was by Spike & the Bulldogs, playing songs of the fifties and sixties. This
very popular group brought in a lot of people and provided a good time.

On Saturday I stopped at the open house at Train Town, just around the corner or across the fence, depending upon how you get there. Train Town is
home of Fort Wayne Railroad Historical Society and Nickel Plate Berkshire Locomotive 765.

Mutual curiosity, I think.

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