[PRCo] The Great Dorset Steam Fair

[Schneider Fred]

Some of you might like this ....

But I have always be intrigued by how the Europeans could become so  
connected to history and we cannot.   A friend of mine who has spent  
more time than me on both continents felt it was obvious.   If you  
grow up in a house that is 600 years old, history is all around  
you.   You accept history.   You live history.   But, if, like an  
American, you grow up in a 1960s house or a 1990s house in a  
disposable society and fish McDonald's cups out of your lawn, then  
you simply don't revere history.   Perhaps he was correct.

Our Rough and Tumble Engineers in Kinzers gets thousands of people to  
its annual reunions and I've enjoyed going there since 1956 to watch  
the tractors.  At the earlier events you could even drive a steam  
traction engine (steam farm tractor).   The link below shows their  
schedule for 2009 and pictures of the 2008 and 2007 events.

http://www.roughandtumble.org/

But a friend of my clued me into a similar but much more monumental  
show every year in England's West Country that gets 200,000 attendees  
each year in one week!  The Great Dorset Steam Fair.  Only the Brits  
would use a steam farm tractor to haul a lorry trailer loaded with a  
95-tonne (the British spelling, if you don't mind) steam locomotive  
onto the fair grounds.   (In one of the tapes that you can look at,  
the locomotive shows with the Canadian Pacific name on the side.   It  
was part of the Merchant Navy class of locomotives.   Each engine was  
named after a steam ship company that worked out of Southampton after  
World War II and Canadian Pacific Railway's ships were included.)    
(The Brit's had a great practice of naming locomotives ... I would  
have loved to have the name plate off the INDOMITABLE or the  
INVINCIBLE, either of which I thought would look really nice on my  
Volkswagen.)  But this event is unreal.   You may enjoy looking at  
some of these videos.   When you do, please consider that maybe their  
event is wildly successful also because the first steam crude steam  
engine was an English invention (Thomas Severy, 1698).   The first  
successful pumping engine by Thomas Newcommen was built in England  
about 1712.  James Watt's improvements come in the middle 18th  
century ... he was Scottish.  We also imported steam railroad  
technology from Britain.   The entire worldwide industrial revolution  
which Dickens chronicled began in Britain.   Maybe they have the  
right to celebrate.

These may get a tad tedious but you would never believe so many  
things could be operated by steam in addition to farm tractors.    
Steam road rollers.   Steam cranes.   A steam calliope.   Steam  
powered wheels named after George Ferris, carousels and other  
amusement rides.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFTSaFwmQQE&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jfXoZP8iEA&feature=related

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1732686/great_dorset_steam_fair_2008/

And if you want to be among the 200,000 people showing up in 2009,  
here is their web site.

http://www.gdsf.co.uk/