Steam tractor

[Manfred M]

I spent a few hours at the Ontario Heritage Steam Museum, in Puslinch, Ontario. The museum is only open to the public a few hours every year. Three old steam powered tractors were stoked up for the event. This one was pulling passengers around the site.




Sawyer-Massey was a relatively short lived venture that was part of the Massey-Ferguson company; Sawyer was a Hamilton, Ontario steam boiler manufacturer.

[Wavelength]

Is this a rail road engine converted for road purposes? Nice capture

[Manfred M]

Is this a rail road engine converted for road purposes? Nice capture

No, this is a purpose-built steam tractor circa 1910, with engines up to 25HP. I understand that they were very popular in the Canadian Prairies for farming.

[pnodrog]

Very interesting - even more so with your background comments. Judging by how the passengers are dressed that is snow on the ground not warm white sand as we have here at the moment.

[Donald]

They had many agricultural uses. This is one of a pair. The other one is at the other end of the field. You can see the cable that goes from one to the other. Between them they pull a plough across the field, turning the soil. I also have a picture of the plough somewhere. It is a 6-furrow machine and there is a crew of 3 people sitting on it to operate it. So, you can tell that this was quite a labour intensive operation - 3 people on the plough and at least 1 person on each of the steam tractors.

[tbob]

Our neighbour had one he used in the 1960's to run a belt driven thresher for his oat crop. The most dangerous looking operation I have ever seen, multiple wide canvas belts running around pulleys at high speed. Nothing guarded.

[Shadowman]

Nicely captured.

[Dave A]

Nice image Manfred. I've played golf near Puslinch but didn't even know about the Museum.

Dave

[bnnrcn]

Very nice

[Manfred M]

Nice image Manfred. I've played golf near Puslinch but didn't even know about the Museum.

Dave

They don't have a website, but this link is not too bad.


http://woodgears.ca/steam_museum/

[IzzieK]

Good image, Manfred...Heard of Massey-Ferguson before but I can't remember how long ago...I like the processing and the history...

[Manfred M]

Very interesting - even more so with your background comments. Judging by how the passengers are dressed that is snow on the ground not warm white sand as we have here at the moment.

Definitely not white sand. The air temperature was fairly low and that helped with the smoke and condensing water vapour in the shots.