A Full Head of Steam:
(Page 3 of 5)
Not Your Usual Kind of Steamer
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The Bryan steam tractor is unusual in other ways, too. In the early 1920s, Motor Age magazine wrote, 'The Bryan light steam tractor ... marks a new step in tractor practice. For the first time in tractor history, this machine uses a high pressure superheated steam boiler, with a steam atomized fuel burner, in a form that makes it entirely possible to use the very lowest grade of fuel.'
'When I first started learning how to run the Bryan (and I'm still learning), I got a copy of the original operator's manual,' Peter says, 'and when I started reading about the fuel system, it was scary.'
The Bryan steam tractor has two fuel tanks, and its fuel system uses a gasoline pilot light, and kerosene to heat the water. You have to hand-pump the pressure up on both of them.
'At first, I was a little leery of that system, but it's not so bad now.'
That's a Steam Tractor?
The Bryan steam tractor was unusual also because it doesn't look like a steam tractor.
'People who are used to those big steam traction engines don't know what this Bryan is at first,' Peter says. 'It looks like a gas tractor. Some people come up and stand there and look for a little while until they finally figure it out, and say, 'That's a steam engine, isn't it?' Then they have a lot of questions about how it works, and everything.'
Almost Like New
Seventy-year-old tractors often need lots of work and show a lot of wear. But not this one.
'I know that Norman Pross bought it from a guy in Kansas City in the mid-1970s. But it must not have been used much, because nothing appears to be worn out on it. There's no wear in the holes in the drawbar; the wheel lugs don't have any wear. There aren't any wrench marks on anything. Usually when something's been used, you can tell if they had a little bit of fixing that needed to be done, or if something had to be done to them. But not on this one.'
On Memorial Day, 1999, Peter had the Bryan running. His plan was to show it a few months later at the Western Minnesota Steam Thresher's Reunion at Rollag, Minn.
But first, by law it had to be tested properly.
'The state of Minnesota tested it, and the first time they test a steam engine that hasn't been working for a long time, they hydro it to one and a half times the working pressure, or in the case of the Bryan, to over a thousand pounds per square inch. Actually, I think they went up to 1,200 pounds per square inch on this one.'
So the spectator at the Western Minnesota Steam Thresher's Reunion in Rollag, Minn., a few months later, wouldn't have had to flee. While the machine was there, Peter says it garnered a great deal of interest.
But then, the Bryan steam tractor has always garnered a great deal of interest. Farm Implements and Tractors magazine from the 1920s said, 'The Bryan Light Steam Tractor has attracted considerable attention for several years, and the demand for the machine has been almost spectacular. We understand this tractor employs a small, compact steam power plant which is said to be decidedly economical. The fact that a steam tractor is a long-life proposition, having an abundance of stored power for emergencies, gives the new tractor an important place in the industry.'
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