This picture also taken Oct. 27, 1961 at the Friends Bible
College Homecoming and Sale. It is the Stillwater 10 hp No. 2723
made by Minnesota Thresher Co., Stillwater, Minn. Does anyone know
of any other Stillwater engines besides this one and the one that
Forrest Pense of Harvard, Nebraska has? I borrowed some parts from
his engine to use as patterns to make some of mine. This engine is
over 76 years old and I have a Kansas Boiler Certificate on it.
Grandfather Hoffman and his two brothers were the first to own a
steam traction engine in that valley. It was a Huber separator and
engine. After several years Grandfather sold his interest and
bought this Peerless.
The Summer of 1918 they were threshing and had a breakdown at
the straw carrier and had to stop. While the men were all in the
back end of the barn floor, the front end of the boiler blew out.
(The cause the stack had never been covered and the flue sheet and
boiler were eaten by the acid formed by the water and soot.) One
piece of casting hit the casting under the thresher cylinder and
broke it in two pieces. Some of the pieces were sticking in the
barn doors. No one was hurt. That was end of ‘Dick’, which
is what Grandfather called this engine.
The men in the picture are from left to right: Samuel W.
Hoffman; Abraham Enterline; Lester E. Enterline; Uriah Snyder and
Peter W. Hoffman. The two later ones being my Grandfathers.
Apparently the charmin’ character adornin’ the face
o’ my post-card presentation comes from out around ‘your
neck ‘o the woods’. Sometime ago however, she migrated to
St. Louis, Missouri, and now rests proudly and peacefully at the
National Museum of Transport, Barretts Station Road, (near M. P. R.
R. tracks), St. Louis 22, Mo. and our gigantic emigrant – that
grotesque hunk o’ pure American science is one of Chesapeake
& Ohio’s efficient 2-8-4’s; Berksline type, built by
the American Loco Co. in Jan. ’44. She once rambled o’er
and ’round the Blue Ridge mountain slopes back in the forties.
Now, she’s just a monumental figure to an era when
transportation meant railroads and railroads meant steam. Perhaps
Blue ridge mountains are literally ‘starved’ to echo her
stack music, the tone of her deep-throated whistle, the
clangin’ o’ her rods, an’ the chimin’ o’ her
luxurious bell with its slightly different ting than that o’
that cold hearted ‘Behometh’ that purrs the diesel that, so
sleek and powerful, rides with poise and pride, the history-haunted
rails made famous by our ‘Blue Ridge’ Miss, her ‘Candid
Colleagues’ and their forefathers – this is rather fictional,
yet is self-evident and perpetuates the fact of my great concern
o’er the loss of so many of our familiar steam Friends. And to
this paragraph, may I add – even as a ‘Monument’, our ole
2727 still remains in glory in the eyes of the Nostalgic Steam
Admirers, despite the mighty stunnin’ blow by that heffer that
purrrrrs – – – that so called ‘more efficient Diesel’.
A Plow Test at Purdue University, October 14, 1911 with 3
oil-pulls and a 50 bottom plow. This plow unit broke (he
world’s plowing record of the period by turning over a stubble
field at (he rate of an acre every 75 seconds. The unit, biggest
built at the time, turned over 7 acres every mile it traveled. The
engines pulling the unit were operated on a kerosene distillate
costing four cents a gallon. They consumed 22 gallons of fuel per
hour which amounted to six and one-half cents per acre.
Locomotive Boiler made in Japan, located in Formosa. A Boiler is
a boiler wherever you find it. The one shown is at a sugar refinery
in Central Formosa. It was made in Japan and used on the railway as
a locomotive during the time the Japanese were running things on
Formosa. General MacArthur changed the deal there and among other
changes was this locomotive turned into a steam generator for the
factory. Photo made in May of 1958. The fire box is just about the
right size to set an old hen in. They must have had good fuel.
Sending a picture of a little engine. I made it 3 or 4 years
ago. It took 2 years spare time and nearly every Sunday to build
it. It’s built after a 1909 American Abell engine my Father
used to thresh with. Specifications are bore 1, stroke 2′, hind
wheels 11 x 5 wide, front wheels 7′ x 3′, boiler diameter
5, flywheel 6′. You can see the hand pumps for pumping in the
water over the hind wheel. I’ve water tested it to 160 gauge
pressure and 75 PSI working pressure. The car behind it is a 1958
Pontiac. Was at Pionera in Saskatoon 58-59 You can nearly see the
game cock in the smoke box door, as that was the American – Abell
slogan, ‘Cock of the North’ line. Made all castings of
aluminum. 9 copper flues. It steams pretty good as long as you keep
the wood and water in it.
The machine and engine were owned by a man named John
Frail who is the man shown behind the engine in the picture and
whom has the full beard.
I am not sure what the make of the separator or engine was but
with the steering on the opposite side from the flywheel I do know
it would really be something to set and run.
I have subscribed to your magazine for many years and thought
that this picture would make a good one for your ALBUM.
My Gaar-Scott that I got two years ago and fixed it up with a
new smoke-box and stack. I overhauled it and runs like a top. It
came out in 1906 and has done a lot of work, but the boiler is as
smooth and nice inside and out. I tested it to 250 lbs. cold and
nothing leaked so I set the pop at 100 lbs. but it will work on 50
or 60 lbs. It has a Baker Bal. valve and it works fine had it up to
Mansfield-Richland Co. Reunion the last two years. The picture is
of engine and myself in the parade. I had in on the fan and it
worked fine. No. 14368, 13 hp.
