Second Wind for Port Huron Model 24-75 Steam Engine
By Don Voelker
For more than 80 years, a Port Huron steam engine has been a part of Robert Vonderau’s life. Although he now sees the steamer only when attending local tractor shows, Robert remembers clearly the day the massive engine arrived at his family’s farm.
The Port Huron Model 24-75, no. 7973, built in 1919 by the Port Huron Engine & Thresher Co., ort Huron, Mich., was purchased in 1922 for $2,500 by the Vonderau family in New Haven, Ind. Robert Vonderau was just 3 at the time, but remembers the momentous event. His father chose the Port Huron, he says, because its compound-cylinder design was efficient and powerful. Steam entered the first cylinder, expanded and transferred into the second cylinder to be used again, then moved up the smokestack, creating draft for the boiler. Weighing in at nearly 21,000 pounds, the engine was rated at 24 hp on the drawbar and 75 hp on the belt.
(Excerpt from Farm Collector, December 2006)