A Full Head of Steam:
(Page 2 of 5)
Bryan Steam Tractors
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From 1920 to about 1928, Bryan Harvester Co. built two types of steam tractors. The first was a lightweight (3,400 pounds) 26-70 hp machine which used Bryan's revolutionary tube boiler with 600 pounds of working pressure, and 1,200 pounds of tested pressure. It used a two-cylinder, 4x5 inch bore and stroke engine, with ground speeds varying from 1/8 to 7 1/2 mph. Its wheelbase was 88 inches, its length was 142 inches, height 64, and width, 72.
The second was a 20-70 hp machine, but was actually pretty much the same machine with the horsepower cut 'due to a limited steam reserve,' C.H. Wendel says in Encyclopedia of American Farm Tractors. This second model, which weighs 5,500 lbs., is the one Peter Mandt has restored.
'I've always been into steam engines and tractors and stuff,' the 32-year-old Ford automobile mechanic says. 'Mark Peterson of Luverne, N.D. inherited a Bryan from his uncle (legendary old tractor collector Norman Pross of Luverne, N.D.). I've been bugging Mark for a few years to let me take the Bryan and play with it.'
Meanwhile, Peter helped his father restore an old tractor ('It just led to more,' he chuckles), attended steam school in Rollag, Minn., and got interested in steam engines. 'After I saw that Bryan, I knew it was kind of a unique deal, and I wanted to see it run.'
It Works!
So in May, 1999, a week before Memorial Day, Peter finally got Mark Peterson's permission, and hauled the Bryan to his home workshop. It had not been run since it had been purchased in the mid-1970s.
'It had been sitting in the yard behind Mark's house for quite a while, so everything was stuck,' Peter recalls. 'The engine was stuck, but I didn't have to spend a lot of time loosening it up.'
He cleaned out the fuel system, hydro tested the boiler (testing for leaks using water, which will not expand and explode, instead of steam, which will), and fired it up.
'I had it running about ten days after I got it.'
Truth be told, Peter was a little bit leery about the machine's steam pressure, too.
'It builds up pressure real quick. The first time I steamed it up it reached a couple hundred pounds in three minutes,' Peter says, 'because the tubes are so small, and it holds a very limited amount of water -about 12-15 gallons when it's full - and the half-inch tubes are right in the kerosene fire, so it heats up very fast.'
It is designed to steam up to 600 lbs. psi in five minutes; this compares to the several hours required for a steam traction engine to build up its less-than-200 lbs. psi of pressure.
(Old-time newspapers used to revel in describing the arc and measuring the actual distance unfortunate threshermen were flung when these less-than-200-lbs.-psi-of-pressure traction engine boilers exploded. However, today these boilers on steam traction engines are strictly regulated and very safe, including the Bryan, whose greater pressure would not translate into greater explosions, because it has such a minimal amount of water, Peter explains.)
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