Seriously Big Toys

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

Remember the old saw about the only difference between a man and a boy is the size of his toys? I saw some major men today. I went to a steam engine show. This is put on every year by a local (mid-Michigan) club of antique tractor enthusiasts. Some of these monsters are 12 or 15 feet tall, weigh more than 10,000 lbs. (about 4500 kilos for you metricated folk), and generate as much as 30 or 40 horsepower.

Yep - 1 british horsepower for every 250 lbs. Not the best power-to-weight ratio I’ve ever seen. But the strangest thing is how quiet the steam-powered ones were. You could be 20 feet away from one, see flywheels a-turning and crankshafts a-cranking, and only hear a whisper from it. Until someone put a load on it, that is. Then they really kicked into Noisy Mode, and were chugging along like… well, a steam train.

These dinosaurs were huffing and puffing all over the place - pulling wagons, running a shingle mill, grading the road, running a lumber mill, pulling most anything that wasn’t nailed down. Most were oil fired, like the Rumleys and Advances. Some were coal-fired. There was a buncha those new-fangled gasoline burnin’ things, but a real man feeds his traction engine coal, or at least wood. I gotta go back every year or so, just to get a whiff of coal smoke, and see what grampa must have used on his farm.

There was a pair of paramedics wandering the grounds, apparently stationed there for the day to treat anyone who had their foot smashed flatter than a pancake by a steel wheel that was taller than Michael Jordan and heavier than a Buick. One was a guy, the other a girl, both about 25 or so. An old geezer had her up on the platform of his traction engine with him, and let her drive the beast. The guy EMT had to stand behind and out of the way. There was no way the geezer was gonna let get between him and the cute girl!

Anyone else get a kick out of seeing this sort of stuff?

Oh - and the second strangest thing of the day was seeing another guy on the platform of one of these monsters. He was dressed the part - dirty coveralls, stained t-shirt, sooty stains on his hands and face - and talking on his cell phone. Those damn phones are everywhere these days!

2

Not too impressive. My previous employer had a 1998 Ford/New Holland 9880, aka Big Big Blue. An articulated chassis and a 400hp Cummins Diesel. Yes, 400 hp. Of course it weighed about 20000 lbs so it was a mere 50lb/hp. You could pull down building with that thing. It had dual wheels at all four corners and each one (eight in all!) was 7.5 feet tall. Top speed was 26mph. 3x4 manual gears.

There was also a Little Big Blue. It was a 1997 Ford/New Holland 8870 with a mere 200hp and small (4 ft tall) single front wheels and dual 6 foot rears. A frightening top speed of 21mph downhill and 20mph uphill. 16 semiautomatic forward speeds.

After operating tractors like that, those old steam tractors just seem like lumbering, underpowered slugs.

3

Whos compairing steam engines to modern tractors?? You apperantly. Why I do not know.

Steam engines are freakin awesome… something about the raw power generated only from fire and water… the yin and yang. When I was little my Dad had one of those little steam engines you put water in and lit via a fuel pellet. It was amazing the energy that thing put out, alone on its base run full blast it would vibrate all across the garage floor seemingly alive. I would LOVE to collect those now, I use to work at a hobby shop for several years and would look at them in catalogs. They are SOOOOOO expensive… hundreds of dollars… the old ones even more so…

4

Yeah, but sewalk, you’re missing out on the indescribable beauty of those things! The sounds they make, the way they move, all the whirling bits going, its amazing! They make all kinds of big honkin’ machines these days, but ya know, they don’t have the style and the magic that the old ones do.

5

Sorry, but as someone who has worked for a living on a farm tractor, I don’t get it. You want me to appreciate something with 1/10th the power, crappy iron tires, no air conditioning, and no freaking CD player?!?

No thanks, I’ll just appreciate the men who did operate those beasts for a living. They were definitely Real Men.

[sub]I hope you realize that I am being a bit tongue in cheek here. I do understand why these machines should be preserved and I really do appreciate them but like I said, it makes me appreciate the men who rode herd on them even more.[/sub]

6

Now, me personaly, I like tractors that don’t suddenly explode, killing and injuring all those around it…

http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010730/ts/life_explosion_dc_3.html

I am pretty sure this dosen’t happen with new tractors.

Steam tractors scare me. Especialy REALLY OLD steam tractors.

7

I used to live in Mt. Pleasant Iowa, home of the Old Threshers Reunion. Every year for 5 days the entire town smelled of coal smoke, it was great!

8

The new stuff with the turbo diesel engines, air-conditioned cabs, CD players, and hydraulic elevator to lift the operator into the cab, are all nice, but I still like the steam engines better. Yeah, you’ll get more done with the new one, but the exposed mechanisms, the sound, and the smell of it all keep me coming back. If I had to actually work with one day in and day out, I’ll take the new one. If I had to pick one just on sheer coolness, I’ll take steam every day.