Western Minnesota Steam Threshers' Reunion - Rollag, Minnesota 1992

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The 1992 Reunion honored the 150th anniversary of J.I. Case farm machinery.

All photos are 35mm Kodachrome.
Images Copyright © 2008 by Robert E Pence

1943 Lanz Bulldog tractor. These had a single-cyinder, two-stroke diesel engine and were popular in Europe, Australia and Canada. I believe they were a German design.

An impressive lineup of big gas and oil tractors.

An 0-6-0 locomotive built in 1906 by American Locomotive Company circled the grounds pulling a flatcar with a Case display featuring a steam traction engine and threshing machine. Following the flatcar were bleacher cars, former livestock cars with part of the siding removed and with bleachers facing inward toward the show grounds.

Emerson Brantingham was an early builder of powerful, well-made big tractors. J.I. Case later bought the company to acquire their highly-regarded wagons and haying machinery and dropped the rest of the company's product lines.

The business end of a 110-horsepower Case steam traction engine. I think there were seven of these engines at this reunion, and that's most of the ones of this model that survive.

A Case 12-25, smallest of the two-cylinder tractors. It has a horizontally-opposed engine and originally had hood panels that closed in the sides of the engine compartment so that only the twin mufflers and flywheel showed.

A line up of 20-40 Case tractors, with two-cylinder horizontal opposed engines. The two earlier models on the right have tubular square radiators that cooled by a draft induced by the engine exhaust, and the two later models on the left have conventional fan-cooled radiators.

A Case 30-60 tractor with a two-cylinder horizontal side-by-side engine, one of two at this show. These are very scarce. The cooling water cascades over baffles in the square tank at the front, and the exhaust vents through the square stack at the top of the tank to cause air to circulate over the baffles.

The crossmotor tractors replaced the two-cylinder tractors. With their upright inline four-cylinder engines operating at higher speeds (up to 800rpm) they provided better visibility, maneuverability and economy than their predecessors. This is a rare 40-72 model, the largest of the crossmotors and for many years the largest Case tractor.

The crossmotor tractors were rugged and reliable, but Case held onto that design well past obsolescence and hurt their position and reputation in the market. When they introduced the Model L in 1929, they made up for lost time. With a 403 cubic inch four-cylinder engine operating at 1100rpm, the L was powerful, fuel-efficient, and easy enough to operate that a farmer could entrust it to a boy.

A Model L with factory-optional winter cab and Moto-meter (temperature guage mounted in the radiator cap). These tractors didn't have automatic thermostats, and when burning kerosene it was beneficial to run them as hot as possible, short of boiling away the coolant. Standard practice was to raise the curtain behind the radiator screen to block air flow. If the radiator started to boil over, you lowered the curtain incrementally until it stopped boiling. A Moto-Meter took away the guesswork by giving a direct reading of the coolant temperature.

The smaller Model C was a scaled-down Model L, created for the farmer who didn't need such a big tractor. It shared the L's good attributes and carried on the Case tradition of rugged, reliable design and construction.

An early-model Case DC, three-plow tractor. Starting in 1938 through 1940 Case changed colors to Flambeau Red and introduced styling with new models. The D series replaced the C series and the LA replaced the L. Mechanical differences weren't great, though, consisting mainly of adding a fourth forward gear to the transmissions.

Even though Case started making rubber tires available in 1934, during World War Two many tractors were shipped on steel wheels because rubber for tires was a critical war commodity.

A post-WWI Model VAC, smallest in the flambeau red series. These were really good tractors and very good performers in their weight class, and I think a lot of people didn't comprehend that because Case's top management chose to downplay their marketing, afraid that the VAC would cut into their established market for the S-series tractors, competitive with the Farmall H and John Deere B.

Photos taken along the daily parade route featuring mostly steam traction engines with some gas tractors.

The Case 110 is the biggest surviving model of their steam traction engines. They built a few 150-horsepower engines, but none have survived; one boiler survives, but no complete engines. These machines weigh in at 22 tons.

Jamie with a very large Case Eagle.

The Pioneer has a low-speed four-cylinder horizontally opposed engine.

The building houses industrial engines running on steam supplied by the Montana Boiler, so named because it was rescued from a ditch in Montana and rebuilt.

A 110-horsepower Case traction engine belted up to a Prony Brake (dynamometer) for horsepower testing.

A vintage carousel powered by a vintage steam carousel engine.

A big Gaar Scott steam traction engine built in Richmond, Indiana.

This Case L, belted to the Prony Brake, tested out at 75 horsepower stock except for a bump-up in the maximum governed rpm. Original factory rating for this model was 47 horsepower.

Rumely Oil Pulls are two-cylinder kerosene tractors built in La Porte, Indiana. In the 1920s they were among the most durable, efficient tractors built. Allis Chalmers acquired Rumely during the great depression.

BIG Minneapolis tractor with a four-cylinder inline, horizontal engine.

Even bigger Twin City 60 with a six-cylinder inline upright engine. This tractor has extension rims on the rear wheels for added traction and/or operating in soft or sandy soils.

A Huber steam traction engine built in Marion, Ohio. Huber is one of the few that continued after the earliest years to build engines with return-flue boilers, identified by the smokestack at the rear end.

Buffalo Pitts built quality steam engines. Before Case started building their own engines, they recommended Buffalo Pitts engines for use with their threshing machines.

Avery, of Peoria, Illinois, mounted the engine on a frame beneath the boiler instead of bolting it to the top of the boiler shell. They claimed increased boiler life because there was less stress on the boiler shell, and the competitors said, "Yeah, but the engine will wear out faster because it's down there in the dust and dirt!"

Avery's double-cylinder engines are beautifully smooth in operation.

I think this is the only Minneapolis compound engine I've seen. In a compound engine, the steam from the boiler goes first to a smaller high-pressure cylinder, and then passes through a larger, low-pressure cylinder to maximize fuel efficiency. Except for Port Huron, most makers abandoned compound engines for farm use early one. The fuel savings didn't effectively offset the increased cost of manufacture and maintenance.

Note the Case automobile approaching in the background

I count 14 plow bottoms behind this Case 110 traction engine.

An early 20-40 two-cylinder tractor.

In the mid teens Case started experimenting with a lightweight design using an automotive engine. They had many surplus Case automobile engines in a warehouse, and they put them on three-wheeled chassis. The big wheel on the near side was the sole drive wheel, and the same-diameter wheel on the far side was functionally an outrigger to carry the weight. These tractors worked pretty well. Case's established engineering skills combined with the reliability of their automobile engines probably accounted for their success.

Case threshing machines with loads of wheat ready to be threshed. Wheat was cut with a binder and bound into bundles and then stacked in the field in shocks or stooks to dry. The wheat was then loaded onto wagons and hauled to the threshing machine to separate the grain from the straw and chaff. Threshing machines were powered by steam engines or tractors via a long drive belt. One reason for the long belt was to keep the steam engine far from the thresher to minimize the likelihood of sparks being drawn into the thresher and setting it on fire.

Jamie astride a propane-feuled Case 830 high-crop tractor.

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