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53rd. Annual Hesston Steam & Power Show 2009A detailed history of the Hesston Museum can be learned here The Museum is open every Holiday and weekends (Saturday and Sunday) starting on Memorial Day weekend and ending on Labor Day weekend. Museum Grounds open at 11:30am CDT. Trains start running at 12:00pm (noon) until 5:00pm CDT. Many special events are planned during the year including Father's Day, Civil War Days, Labor Day Big Show, Haunted Trains and Christmas Candy Cane Trains plus many other events. Click here to learn more and for links to the specific events. I plan to write a more detailed story/narrative time permitting, but I desired to first get some photos and information on line. Below is selected pictures taken by my sister, (Sharon Fisher) who accompanied me during my youthful journey to eras long gone but still alive at places like Hesston. A description is included next to each picture. Clicking on the picture will take you to a larger version of the picture and some narrative on the subject. Use your back button to return to this page. I will be adding more pictures as I have time, so please check back often to see pics plus additional facts and information. September 23, 2009 - I added about 20 more pictures to this section. The entire section is going to get a re-build and will include videos and many more pictures, time permitting. All pictures on this page are copyrighted and MAY NOT be used without permission. Please see special copyright notice at bottom of page. |
| Title | Subject |
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| Ok, this was not at Hesston, but is of me with my Mom in her driveway. FYI, she turns 82 in October and is still going strong. |
| Standing beside the Steam Powered Electric Generating plant. It is a 40KiloWatt DC generator originally purchased for the La Porte (IN) County Courthouse in 1909. Still operating 100 years later and, thanks to the loving care it receives from the museum staff, looks like showroom new. |
| The kid in me survives! The museum operates 3 gauges of railroads. This is a shot of me in the back car of one of the 14" (wide) rails, also referred to as 1/4 scale. Although smaller in size then the big ones used by the railroads, there are actual Steam Power Locomotive Engines. They are operated by hidden gas or electric motors but are fully functional steam engines. |
| Another shot as I ride away in the 1/4 scale. |
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Next to one of the operating narrow gauge (3' 6" wide tracks as opposed to standard gauge of 4' 8 1/2" used by current USA commercial railroads). Specs on the engine are pending. Footnote Question: why are US railroads an odd size of 4' 8 1/2"? Answer: Because that is the average distance between the neck and ankles of a damsel in distress that is being tied to the railroad tracks. (I did not say it was a good footnote.....) |
| Next to one of the actual 1/4 scale (14" tracks) operating steam locomotives. Prices on these engines can range from a low of $3,500 up to over $15,000 or maybe more. And then you can add the cost of cars, lots of money for trackage, a building to store everything in plus daily operating costs (there is no way you will not play with this toy everyday if it is in your back yard) and the cost of one or more divorces. Yes this could be an expensive hobby, but what a thrill it is to blow the whistle on your own miniature train engine and pull family and friends around your own private railroad. |
| The gentleman in the center has been coming to the Hesston show for over 50 years and (like many regular visitors) ended up being a volunteer. One of his projects was to rebuild and restore the rail inspection car. Cars like this one are used by the railroads for track maintenance inspections. Sitting very low to the tracks, the crew and visually inspect the tracks, ties and fasteners for missing, damaged or faulty parts. His son, to the left, grew up with his day going every year to Hesston and now has joined him in the annual trips. |
| Rides on the car were being offered for a $25 donation. The funds raised were are being used to rebuild another of the museum's locomotives. The cost is unimportant, the ride is the ride of a life time. You are sitting up front looking out of the front windows seeing the view that normally only the engineer gets to see - the whole track! Look carefully at the pipe that goes between the two seats. You can take pictures only if you can do it with one hand because you will need and want one hand holding on. |
| A shot of one of the many 1/8 gauge (appox 7.5" wide tracks). Turning water into steam using a real coal fire, these "little trains" take as much skill to operate as the real thing. Painstakingly built by the people who run them. The museum's club operates several different flavors including steam powered and modernistic looking diesel powered units. In this shot, two coal fired units are operated in "Double Header Mode" allowing them to combine to pull a larger consist (train cars loaded with children of many ages). |
| The Pride of the Hesston Steam Museum, Number 7 - a 67 ton Shay Logging Locomotive rounds Duck Lake to enter the terminal area to discharge another group of satisfied railroad riders. The Shay styled engines use three vertical cylinders to drive a geared crankshaft. This design allowed the designers to "gear down" the drive force much like a car's transmission works in lower gears. Through the properties of mechanical design, reducing the speed increases the power allowing a smaller locomotive engine to pull greater loads. Such geared locomotives were common in logging and mining areas. Number 7 was originally build by Lima for the New Mexico Lumber Company and delivered in November 1929. Later it was transfered to the Oregon Lumber Company. In honor of both, one side is labeled for New Mexico L.C. and the other Oregon L.C. |
| Many old farming tractors where on display and most of them still worked, just not in the fields. This tractor is oil fired and the red box on the side is where the oil was stored, it's gas tank if you desire to call it that. The basic problem with steam is that it is very labor intensive. When steam power first appeared in the general public - both for farming and construction but also personal automobiles (yes there are steam powered cars) labor was very cheap but technology was very expensive. A typical farm tractor would require as much as 4 hours of maintenance and repairs and servicing for every hour of farm production. This was worth it to the farmer because in that one hour of field work he could get done as much as 6 to 8 hours of work using draft horses. This tractor is fired up and running later in the day. |
| Another fuel oil fired steam engine. The large wheel above the rear drive wheel is the belt drive wheel. Many industrial and farm machines where belt driven. This system allowed any tractor with a belt drive to operate any machinery that was belt drive. Just just parked the tractor in the right location, looped the belt over each belt wheel and then enabled the tractor's Power Take Off (PTO) to spin the belt. The red belt can be seen going off to the right to a crop thrashing machine demonstration. This form of belt driven equipment survived into the 50s and 60s with many tractors still be manufactured with the belt wheel on it even though most farm equipment was being built with a shaft driven PTO. The shaft PTO is still in use today. |
| This is a Stationary Steam Engine. The boiler is not in the picture but it merely produces steam under great pressure. The pressure is released into the control valves which alternately drive a piston back and forth. The piston (to the left in the picture) drives the piston rod thus turning the green & yellow wheel in the center. As this wheel turns it spins the large wheel in the background (right side). This wheel could be connected via a belt (note the large smooth surface) to industrial equipment. This could include sawmills, electric power plants or any manner of equipment that needed to be driven at a steady speed with lots of power. Today this would be replaced by a large electric motor that likely would still be connected via a transfer belt, but with a much smaller drive wheel. The large wheel was used as a function of mechanics: a large wheel turning at a certain speed driving a smaller wheel will result in the smaller wheel turning much faster. If the wheel being driven is 1/2 the circumstance of the driving wheel, the smaller wheel will turn twice as fast. |
| Contrary to the smoke behind these two engines, they were not operating the day I visited. The green one on the right was originally built in Poland. The small switcher engine on the left is diesel powered. My understanding is that both are operational, but were not needed for this day's activities. When I get more information on these two, I will update them with build dates, power and service histories. |
| A shot of the maintenance shop for the 7.5" trains. Note that the cars are stored under the engines. The engines are about 3.5 feet above floor level putting them at a height that is easy to service. These machines need the same kinds of maintenance that the big ones needs - cleaning, oiling and lubrication moving parts, leak repairs for leaks and the list goes on. Each engine received hours of prep work before being fired up and taken out to the tracks for riders. |
| Entering the station, a miniaturized version of a General Electric "General Purpose" aka GEEP, pulls a consist of cars laden with happy travelers. The red-shirted "older" passenger on the last car is actually part of the train crew. Each of these miniature trains has a safety "brakeman" on the end. If he observes any unsafe conduct (standing, leaning way over, reaching out with hands to grab signs or plants along the track side) by a passenger, he uses a hand-held air horn to signal the engineer to stop the train. |
| One of the static displays is a steam powered railroad mounted crane. The railroad car does not move, however the crane is fully functionally. One of the "shows" the staff does is to use the crane to lift logs from a trailer and move them to sawmill. After the saw mill cuts the logs into boards, the cut timber is then lifted by crane and loaded back into the customer's trailer. |
| The engineer warned them before before he opened the vent valves, but some people just need a little more encouragement to stand back. |
| You were warned! |
| An old Avery thrasher. This would be pulled to the field and then wheat could be feed into the machine. The machine would separate the wheat "kernals" from the stems. Then the wheat could be milled for flour or used for livestock feed. Note the wide drive belt looped on side and just hanging there. The belt would be looped over the drive wheel in the center of the picture and then over to the tractor's belt drive wheel to operate the thrasher. |
| Although a late 40s or early 50s diesel farm tractor, note the belt drive wheel on the right hand side of the tractor. The McCormick brand traces it's history back to the early 1800s. The Black & Red IH emblem on the front is for International Harvester which was a joint venture of McCormick and several other companies in 1902. One hundred years later, IH and McCormick have separated and are still manufacturing industrial equipment. For more information on the current crop of McCormick equipment,go here. |
| Another McCormick in the parade of history. This one sports 'orchard' flairings to protect the engine, the wheels and most importantly (in his opinion) the operator from branches and limbs when operating around fruit trees, such as apples and cherries which are grown a lot in the area. |
| An orange Minneapolis-Moline makes it's way down the parade of honors. Originally formed in 1929 with the merger of several equipment manufacturers, MM suffered through a series of mergers/buy outs to 1991 when Agro Corp assumed White Motors which had acquired MM in 1963. Agro Corp opted to not continue the Minneapolis-Moline brand. I do not know if White had shut it down before 1991 or not. Note again the belt Drive wheel on the side near the back. The area where the paint is worn is not from a drive belt, but the parking brake. Many older tractors locked the wheels by pressing a brake pad against the belt drive wheel. It was only after wheel brakes where refined in later years that the tractor was 'parked' by locking the rear wheels' brakes. |
| A Gibson lawn and garden tractor, I think this may be a Model D, but I am not sure. Never seen a Gibson before. Gibson Manufacturing Corporation was founded 1946 by Wilber Gibson. The Gibson tractors were made from around 1948 to 1952, first in Washington State then later in California. I have a new project, learn more about these interesting little tractors. |
| The only thing notable about this Allis-Chalmers tractor is that when I was in high school I worked on a neighbor's dairy farm and he owned a couple of A-C tractors and since they were the first ones I got to drive, naturally, they are my favorite tractor. The Allis-Chalmers brand is part of Agro Corp and as far as I can tell, is no longer marketed in North America. |
| You might erroneously think that this is one modern farm tractor that crashed this party for the old folks. You would be only slightly right. The John-Deere 8020 was developed in the 1950s and sold during the 50s and 60s. They were so far in front of the technology at the time that few farmers had the implements (plows, discs, planters, etc.) that could match the tractor's capabilities. The tractor was rated for 150 horsepower at the draw bar at a time when many tractors being sold were under, way under, 100 HP. In 1960, these tractors retailed for $32,000, which was more then most family farms cost. This priced them out of the primary market at the time which was small family owned and operated farms. Between the massive (at the time) raw horsepower and the price, less than 100 were built. It is such a rare tractor that there is actually a "collectors group". So far in advance at the time, the base design is still used today as a basis by many different brands including Big Green - John Deere. |