Ste 803, 777 Cardero St., Vancouver, 5, B.C.
Concerning the article entitled ‘What May This Develop’
in the March-April Iron-Men Album regarding the unusual Reeves 32
H.P. steamer destroyed in a fire near Kokomo, Indiana in 1947, you
will all be pleased to know how readily and fully the questions
were solved in this regard and also how readily the Iron-Men
Mr. Jerome Peiffer of Belgium, Wisconsin wrote me stating the
motor was a Keck Gonnerman. Of this I had been suspicious when
writing the article, and Mr. S. G. Sunday of Modoc, Indiana, wrote
giving me quite a complete history of the engine’s owners and
for what they had used it. To both these gentlemen we all owe them
our gratitude for their kind help.
Engine 8091 was bought somewhere in the St. Cloud, Minn, area
and taken to near Sycamore, Indian where the owner for some reason
wished to install another motor and had Keck Gonnerman place one of
their doubles thereon, but higher from the boiler and farther ahead
than the Reeves motor and incorporating some of the Keck features
never found on a Reeves and prompting the article above referred
to.
The engine then was used for some threshing around Sycamore,
some excavating work north of Logansport and later in a sawmill at
Walton, Indiana and it was at this location where it was destroyed,
not at Kokomo as previously reported.
Some few years ago I read an article stating that Reeves
equipped some of their engines with the Grimes valve gear. They may
have, but now it seems to me some person may have seen No. 8091 and
could have come to the wrong conclusion!