[PRCo] An afternoon of fun, then and now

[Fred Schneider]

Fifty years ago today (if you are reading this on Friday), I hopped  
the Conestoga Transportation Co. Lititz bus into Lancaster, and with  
a transfer (remember those things?) boarded CTC's Leaman Place bus.   
The first was an ACF Brill C-36, the second was a GMC 36 passenger  
diesel.   At Paradise I jumped off and got onto Brandywine Transit  
Company's waiting Fitzjohn for Coatesville.   In those days you could  
still ride CTC, Brandywine, the Short Line, Philadelphia Suburban and  
PTC's local bus services all the way into center city Philadelphia,  
in addition to Greyhound or the Pennsylvania Railroad.   Twenty-five  
or so years before that you could have ridden a Conestoga Traction  
Company suburban car to Coatesville, then a West Chester Street  
Railway car, then a P&WCT car and then the elevated into downtown  
Phllly, or a steam train on the Pennsy.
To continue this story ... and you know where the delete key is on  
your machine ... fifty years ago I got off at the Arthur Young Boiler  
Works along route 30 in Kinzers, Pennsylvania.   There was an eight- 
year-old group of farmers who collected steam farm tractors, or more  
properly traction engines.   They called themselves the Rough and  
Tumble Engineers.   They managed to chew up about two acres of  
Young's property with their once a year events and they had a ready  
made boiler shop.   In those days some of the farmers were actually  
still using some of those old Case or Avery or Peerless or whatever  
traction engines in the spring to steam tobacco seed beds to kill  
weed seeds before planting the tobacco seeds.    A few used them for  
saw mills.

Well, guys, I think Rough and Tumble Engineers deserves a little  
publicity.    They ultimately moved across the road and up the hill  
from Art Young's place.   And God only know's how many acres they  
occupy today ... it makes the Seashore trolley museum look cramped.    
What started out as a museum to farm machinery has grown to a museum  
to steam machinery and a museum to engines.  And this week (August  
16-19) is the 58th Annual Thresherman's Reunion.   In addition to  
their own events, they have an International Harvester group and a  
Minneapolis-Moline tractor group there this year.

The pageant this afternoon (and there will be one tomorrow and again  
on Saturday) went on for probably an hour  ... there must have been  
at least 25 steam traction engines in it dating from 1896 into the  
1920s.   I think there were no fewer than ten Rumely Oil Pull  
tractors (these were some of the early internal combustion beasts  
from 1912-1920).   There might have been 50 or so gasoline and diesel  
tractors from the 1920s into the 1960s ... all sorts of marks.   The  
strangest one I saw was a Plymouth.   I asked the owner if it was  
related to Plymouth cars or Plymouth locomotives ... he answered the  
locomotives.   Fate Root Heath Company built it in Plymouth, Ohio ...  
they built only about 70 tractors.   And this chap had one in mint  
condition.   I counted 30 Minneapolis-Moline or Avery MM internal  
combustion beasts plus four or five older Avery steam traction  
engines.   Case, International, John Deere ... you name it and its  
there.   You like treaded machines ... there are Caterpillar tractors  
there.    And, of course, some of these guys are pulling thrashers  
just for show.

And another building has more than 30 of those one-lung banging  
machines... one cylinder gasoline engines with governors that only  
inject a little fuel when the flywheel slows enough to say goose  
me.   About ten of them were running.    And in the adjacent building  
was this marvelous propane engine (with hydrogen ignition) used for a  
standby power plant in a school in Belgium ... that sucker was  
banging away all day.  The prompter traded a tractor for it.  It was  
built in Liege.   There is another building just crammed full of  
stationary steam engines.

Another building filled with harvesting equipment.

And a building filled with automobiles.   It was locked.

And a flea market.   I didn't go there.   This house has enough fleas.

And all the food you could possibly want to eat.   Kinzer Fire  
Company was running the cafeteria.   And several other vendors.

Oh, and two steam railroads.   The most interesting is a home made  
version of a shay, with hypoid gearing and only two cylinders and no  
boiler jacket.   If it rains, they're not going to have attendance  
anyway, so we don't need to put a raincoat on it.   The hypoid gears  
came out of a truck transmission.

If you want more information, take a look at the URL below.   Enjoy  
the photos of prior events.   Great stuff.

http://www.roughandtumble.org

If anyone shows up that read this?   You can get me at 717 569-6791.

And if you need to know how to find the place ... Kinzers is on U. S.  
route 30, about 1.5 miles west of route 41 at Gap and maybe less than  
a mile west of route 772 in Gap.  North Side of route 30.   About 1  
mile west of Vintage, 2 miles roughly west of Leaman Place.

This is a show for people who like machinery.   I understand they,  
like the trolley museums, are having trouble enticing youngers into  
the fold.   So if you see it now, you may be seeing it at its prime.