A DECEMBER 1955 LETTER

New Rockford, North Dakota

(This is a December 1955 Letter Sorry. Ed.)

I notice the article in the latest issue of the ALBUM (Jan.-Feb., 1955) by William R. Benda, where he informs ?. ?. Nelson of Rollag, Minnesota, that Advance never did build a 22 hp. side mounted. I imagine you will have many letters in regard to this the 22 hp. Advance was a very popular engine. I never operated one myself, but I still have a 26 hp. Advance. I enclose a picture of it. I had always assumed that the 22 hp. was the same as the 26 hp. except that it was simple and the 26 hp. is a tandem compound. A check of a couple of catalogs tells me this is true. I have an Advance catalog for 1911, and the specifications for the two engines are exactly the same as far as I can see except for the difference in the engine proper. I am speaking of the straw burners with LeFever boilers. I also have an Advance Rumley catalog for about 1915 and it shows the 22 and 26 hp. side mounted and the 20 hp. Universal rear mounted in addition to the Rumley single and double engines. In this catalog the only difference in the specifications of the Advance engines is that the 26 hp. had wider drivers.

I have operated three different Advance engines, all of them at least two threshing seasons. The first one was a 35 hp. tandem compound, the second one a 30 hp. cross-compound (this was a dandy engine), and the third one is the 26 hp. that I now have. These were all straw burners. I used coal in the cross compound one season.

I also find the article by ?. ?. Brown very interesting, especially the reference to the Rumley 36-110. The first engine I ever operated was a 36 hp. Rumely, built about 1909. ! operated it for 10 or 12 falls so I knew it pretty well. It had Baker piston valves, was the smoothest engine I ever saw. Mine had 76 flues instead of the 88 his specifications show, possibly the Canadian engines were different. Mr. Brown’s statement, ‘the only engine that uses this reverse’, (Wolf) must be referring to Rumely engines. We all know that many engines of different makes used the Wolf reverse. How many know that Rumely once made a return flue engine?

My Advance 26 hp. is all painted and striped, I still have the ‘Advance Straw Burner’ stencil to put on the sides of the boiler. It has large water tanks on platform, the governor is the top half of a Pickering ‘grafted’ to a Waters body and valve, the stack is from a Minneapolis. I plan to put on a spark arrester that will hide the roll at the top and make it look more like an Advance should.