Steam tractor – Wikipedia
A steam tractor is a pulling vehicle powered by a steam engine; in North America, the term usually refers to a type of agricultural tractor; this article focuses on vehicles designed for direct-pulling of ploughs and other implements.
Development (Great Britain)
On both sides of the Atlantic, the development of steam-powered agricultural machines differed significantly. In the United Kingdom, a number of traction engine builders attempted to produce an agricultural engine that could directly pull a plough in place of a team of horses, known as “steam tractors.”
Development (North America)
The first steam tractors were portable engines built on skids or wheels and transported by horses; later models used the steam engine’s power to power a drive train to move the machine; and by the mid-1920s, the steam engine had been phased out.
Threshing
The drive belt was used to transfer power from a portable engine to a threshing machine in rural North America. On a “threshing day,” the owner/operator of a threshing machine or threshing rig would travel from farmstead to farmstead threshing grain. Oats were a common item to be threshed, but wheat and other grains were also common.
Ploughing
The immense pulling power of steam tractors allowed them to be used for ploughing as well; however, some steam tractors were better suited for ploughing than others, with the large Minneapolis Threshing Machine Co., J.I. Case, and Reeves steam tractors being the best examples.
Manufacturers
Manufacturers of traction engines and steam tractors can be found here.
Festivals and museums
A Hundred Years of Progress, Carthage, NC [1] Hesston Steam Museum (La Porte, Indiana) [2] Antique Gas and Steam Engine Museum (Vista, California) Antique Powerland (Brooks, Oregon, USA)[1] Fort Edmonton Park (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada) Heidrick Ag History Center (Woodland, California) Heritage Museum on the Olean
See also
Farm equipment History of steam road vehicles Live steam Steam car Steamroller Steam tricycle Steam wagon Traction engine can be found on Wikimedia Commons.
References
“Collectors at the Great Oregon Steam-Up are always steamed about their passion,” says Allan Brettman in The Oregonian on July 24, 2010.
External links
Parts 1 and 2 of the Steam Tractors series
When was the last steam tractor made?
Many steam traction engines built in the 1920s were equipped with broad wheels for road construction, giving rise to the term “steamroller.” Huber built its last steam traction engine, a steamroller, in 1927, but the romance of steam traction engines hasn’t died yet.
When was the first steam tractor built?
Daniel Best moved to California in 1870 to work on his brother Henry’s ranch, where he was able to apply his skills as an innovator to the large western grain growers market.
When were steam engines used in farming?
The answer seemed to be steam. A few steam engines had been used on the farm as early as the 1790s, but they were large stationary engines built into barns to drive threshing machines. The portable steam engine, on the other hand, was the typical steam engine for agriculture.
Who built the first steam tractor?
Although steam-powered devices were known as early as the aeolipile in the first century AD, with a few other uses recorded in the 16th and 17th centuries, Thomas Savery is credited with inventing the first commercially-used steam-powered device, a steam pump that used steam pressure directly on water.
What was the biggest steam tractor?
THE 150 HP CASE IS THE WORLD’S LARGEST STEAM TRACTION ENGINE. Built in 1905, only a handful survived until Kory Anderson rebuilt one from the ground up in 2018.
Did John Deere make a steam tractor?
Although it is true that C.H. Deere’s first attempt at building a tractor was in 1912 (although Melvin ultimately failed), John Deere himself had a brief love affair with a tractor, albeit a steam-powered model, as early as 1858.
How many steam tractors were built?
About 30 Sentinel steam tractors were built, including the final version, the Rhinoceros, which was introduced in 1927 and featured front and rear water tanks with a capacity of nearly 1,200 litres.
How powerful is a steam tractor?
Some of the largest steam tractors, such as the 150 horsepower (110 kW) Case (known as “Road Locomotives”), were capable of pulling 30 or more plough bottoms, while the majority were capable of pulling between 6 and 20.
What was the first tractor?
In Clayton County, Iowa, USA, in 1892, John Froelich invented and built the first gasoline/petrol-powered tractor, which featured a Van Duzen single-cylinder gasoline engine mounted on a Robinson engine chassis that could be controlled and propelled by Froelich’s gearbox.
Where was the first steam tractor made?
‘It is believed that credit for the successful construction of the first steam tractor, or road engine, in the United States belongs to a Grand Rapids man, the late Henry G. Stone.
How did the steam tractor change agriculture?
In the 1800s, the large number of horses required for farming consumed a lot of grain, so threshing machines powered by horses or portable steam engines increased daily threshing production by a hundred times. These engines moved from farm to farm under their own steam.
When did traction engines stop being used?
Production lasted until the early twentieth century, when competition from internal combustion engine-powered tractors drove them out of favor, though some were still in commercial use in the United Kingdom in the 1950s and later.
Are steam engines still used?
Although some old steam engines and antique locomotives are still in use in some parts of the world, steam power is still widely used in a variety of applications around the world, and many modern electrical plants use steam generated by coal combustion to generate electricity.