Robert T. Rhode highlights this certainly memorable account from
his father’s childhood. The pictured engine is an exact replica of
the remembered Weeden.
“In the 1920s, when my father, Joe, was a boy, my father’s
uncle, Charley, bought him a Weeden traction engine model. It ran
on real steam, and Joe badgered his mother, Kosie, to fire up the
well. Kosie set the wicks too high and caught the tablecloth on
fire. With stunning agility, she threw the engine, the burning
tablecloth, and the table out the door and into the yard. The heat
of the fire had melted the engine’s piping. Kosie gave the model to
another child in the neighborhood and thought, ‘Good riddance!’
“Knowing how much Joe had admired the engine, Charley purchased
a hot-air rotor for him. The rotor was another kind of engine, and,
while it did not resemble the farm steamers that Joe was familiar
with, my father enjoyed it. He never asked his mother to run it;
rather, he always waited for Charley to light it and make it
go.”
When lit, the burner slid beneath the boiler on this chain drive
Weeden traction engine model.
