Garden Railway Forum

It's pretty hard to find info on this kind of thing when you don't know what to look for so does anyone know the maker of these? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:15 ... museum.jpg

Stupid me, it didn't occur to me to look up traction engine from the Henry Ford. It appears to be an Avery.

Well..... the shape of the dome and the exposed pipework, etc, looks to be more US than UK style.
Then blowing the picture up to 'unrecognisable', there is cast lettering above the smokebox door, which appears to say "AVERY CO..".
The picture itself has a file reference to the Ford Museum.
A quick google for "did ford make traction engines", leads to the Ford museum and a quick dig around takes you to: https://www.thehenryford.org/collection ... ct/212197/

...and there is your answer.

Edited to add, your second post and mine crossed halfway across the Atlantic!

Zoom and enhance!

I'm in awe of the scale of some of these big traction engines. I've seen some videos of the giant Case steam tractors, and I've seen the circus engine at House on the Rock (https://www.wisconsinhistory.org/Records/Image/IM122040), but I'm still amazed each time. My grandpa always told me about when he was a kid and the steam tractor folks would come around to each farm in the area to do the threshing... It's weird to imagine a beast like that chugging around our little farm!

Here's a Case for size comparison:

I always found the big Avery "undermount" traction engines fascinating, but didn't know what they were as the only picture on Wikipedia of one isn't even in the Avery article! I like the unusual ones, like the Best, Lombard, Robey tandem, and lots of obscure makes I might never learn the name of in my life... The sheer height of the Best would make even a Case take a good look at itself. https://th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.znBAxiMPL ... =3&pid=1.7

philipy wrote: ↑Wed Jan 24, 2024 6:58 am Then blowing the picture up to 'unrecognisable', there is cast lettering above the smokebox door, which appears to say "AVERY CO..".

I see now, I was looking at it on a small screened device.

From here in the UK it is impossible to imagine the vastness of the USA Great Plains, but I have to wonder about the thought process of building a machine so big it takes an army of up to 30 operators, an engineering team with lifting equipment to assemble and maintain, and a back-up haulage system to supply fuel and water to keep it in operation. By the time all this is achieved a number of smaller machines could have finished the job and moved on to the next. Even if one failed the work could continue.
How such a dinosaur was transported from the factory in the first place baffles me, followed by the journey from one farm to the next, having to disassemble all of the plough platforms, loading onto road transport and then reassembled. The engine itself is so huge that roads, especially river crossings, must have been a deciding factor in its limitations.
The video shows lots of smiling faces of volunteers operating the ploughs just for fun. I doubt it would have been the case at the time!
As you might have already guessed..... I'm not impressed!

Well most Case engines weren't that big... And remember, this is the biggest plow ever pulled by a traction engine, the loads this would have pulled historically would have been smaller. But if you aren't impressed by a 150 horsepower traction engine pulling a 44 bottom plow then you must be pretty hard to impress! Plow, plough, plowgh.....

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 12:16 pm The video shows lots of smiling faces of volunteers operating the ploughs just for fun. I doubt it would have been the case at the time!

Well, imagine each of these guys behind a horse drawn plow. All they have to do now is stand on the platform. And the engine only requires two, maybe three people to drive. The rest are just riding along.

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 12:16 pm The video shows lots of smiling faces of volunteers operating the ploughs just for fun. I doubt it would have been the case at the time!
As you might have already guessed..... I'm not impressed!

Certainly not, that implement and the people on it weren't very historically accurate! The plow blades were not set very deep, and besides that most pictures of multi-bottomed plowing with steam tractors in the US show maybe two operators on the plow: I've driven across the great plains out to the Rocky Mountains a few times and it's just hours and hours of mostly corn. Used to be wheat, but with modern irrigation corn has really taken over. A lot of it was first turned by horse teams but to effectively run a farm in the high hundreds to thousands of acres takes some big machinery.

I seem to remember Grandpa telling me they used horses to haul the steam engine to the farms each year, so upon further research the one in our township was probably a much more modest affair like this:

drewzero1 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 5:24 pm I seem to remember Grandpa telling me they used horses to haul the steam engine to the farms each year, so upon further research the one in our township was probably a much more modest affair like this:

That's interesting, never seen one of those.

Peter Butler wrote: ↑Thu Jan 25, 2024 12:16 pm The engine itself is so huge that roads, especially river crossings, must have been a deciding factor in its limitations.

When you have this much power (and wheel) you don't have to fit on the road!

And for river crossings... You don't even worry about the bridge, you just go right through...