Box 426 Ridgefield, WA 98642.
This is the last picture taken in 1937 of Swaney Swanson’s
Big Forty Reeves before it was cut up for scrap iron. It was known
in steam circles as The Big Forty Reeves, the biggest the company
made. It developed 40 horse power on the draw bar, which was a lot
more than any 40 horses could pull. For the cold Canadian weather
when it came from the factory, but Swaney had another installed in
front of the smoke stack. It was a two story tractor, as the
engineer sat above the fireman, in a special cab where he had a
good view of the plows and the engine. It had power steering, a
cross compound engine, the drivers were seven feet high and 56
inches wide.
Swaney ordered a special made plow to do breaking; it had
sixteen bottoms and each cut a 16 inch furrow. The plow was beside
the steamer when I took the photo but it was covered with weeds
four feet high and piled high with scrap iron, so it was difficult
to tell how many bottoms were on the original gang, but the bottoms
were all 16 inch breaker bottoms. Swaney claimed that one day he
broke 160 acres of prairie sod with this outfit. According to my
figures it would be a long day.
Swaney did a lot of threshing with one grain separator he
threshed a million bushels of grain. The machine is on display at
the Pioneer Museum at Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. If my memory serves
me correctly, it is a Yellow Avery with a 44 inch cylinder and a 72
inch body. Some of the men who worked for Swaney told me that on a
Saturday afternoon when the men were tired Swaney would stand often
on the feeder and wave four ten dollar bills and yell at the four
spike pitchers, ‘Plug this rig and you can divide this among
yourselves.’ No one ever plugged his machine not when there was
a Big Forty on the other end of the drive belt capable of
developing 120 horsepower.
