A Full Head of Steam:
(Page 4 of 5)
Though Bryan Steam says 'The original Bryan (steam) tractor was highly successful... hundreds of tractors were manufactured and shipped throughout the United States,' figures were often routinely inflated during these times, so little is truly known about how many were actually produced. Regardless, not many of the unusual steam tractors are left. Peter says he originally thought three, but after showing the Bryan at Rollag, Minn., last summer, he upped that number to five: 'One in the Henry Ford Museum, one in the National Ag Hall of Fame in Kansas City, one in Wisconsin, one in a museum in California, and this one.'
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Out of those five, Peter is only sure that the one he restored - and which belongs to his friend Mark Peterson -actually works.
The Bryan Steam Car
Like many entrepreneurs of the time, George Bryan built several different types of vehicles. One was the steam automobile, which used his patented boiler. The Bryan Steam automobile used a boiler which featured 44 7-foot-long tubes heated by a Bunsen-burner type device to produce maximum working steam pressures of 600 pounds. The cars weighed 4,500 pounds, and were painted two-tone platinum gray and robin's egg blue, with black fenders. The upholstery was genuine leather, and the cars resembled Apperson automobiles of the times.
Only one Bryan steam auto still exists today. It would have been two if not for a series of unfortunate events, according to a Peru Tribune article in the 1990s. Betty Grant, Tribune correspondent, writes, 'In 1941, two Bryan Steamers (of the six built in Peru from 1916-1918) remained. (One of these cars) had been built for company president George Bryan, and had a smaller boiler than the other. In 1941 while (Bryan) was in Florida, the car was stored at the (Bryan) plant. Later, (for unknown reasons) the car was moved into a building used for obsolete parts. This building was later sold and the contents had to be removed. Bryan was called in Florida for instructions as to the disposal of the contents and he told them to scrap them, not knowing his car had been moved to this building. They followed his instructions to the letter.'
The Bryan Steam Truck
Probably only one Bryan Steam Truck was ever built. A circa 1920 photo in Farm Implements and Tractors magazine shows a photo of the truck, car, and tractor together.
'This photo was recently taken near Peru, Ind.,' the blurb says. '... The truck and tractor are both products of the Bryan Steam Harvester Co., and we understand that production has started at two factories of the company at Peru.'
In 1925, Bryan lost interest in making vehicles, renamed the company Bryan Steam Corporation, and turned his attention to using steam in the home, perfecting the Bryan water tube boiler. Bryan Steam says, 'It was compact, rugged, impervious to mechanical and thermal shock, and easy to service. It proved to be an ideal boiler for stationary applications, including hot water and steam space heating and high and low pressure steam processing.' These early low-pressure steam and hot water units
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