Collections Reflect US-British Connections

By Nancy Smith
Published on October 1, 2002
article image
courtesy of Nancy Smith
Massey-Sawyer tractor.

Neil Ford parks five Rumely Oil-Pulls and a Ford Windstar van in the driveway of his Milton, Ontario, bungalow. His entire garage has been temporarily transformed into a paint booth for Rumely number six.

Wayne Fischer of Puslinch, Ontario, houses four steam traction engines in a newly built engine barn that measures some 75 feet by 30 feet, by 20-feet tall; poured concrete walkways run around the engines, each of which rests on its own gravel bed.

Walter Dedman of Cambridge, Ontario, hauls his two antique Ruston-Hornsby engines — a giant 500hp and its little brother, a 132hp — on specially constructed tractor-trailers. The big one has two rows of eight tires each and is capable of carrying 65 tons; the smaller one hauls the 132hp engine and accommodates a tiny apartment for Walter in its bow.

These guys aren’t kidding when it comes to collecting old iron, and they’re just a few of hundreds of collectors in eastern Ontario today. They live north of Lake Ontario and south of the Georgian Bay in an area dominated by farming operations for more than 100 years, but that now is being transformed by urban sprawl. Once plentiful, old iron is less in evidence there today as modern housing developments and commercial malls transform the land. Local collectors say they’ve begun to feel the need to preserve their treasures for posterity as well as just for the fun.

To help give Farm Collector readers a glimpse into this corner of the collecting world, Sherwood Hume, a Milton-area collector whose story about his restoration of a Hume tractor appeared earlier this year in the magazine, planned a series of private interviews and visits to area tractor shows in August for Farm Collector.

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