Weekend Steam

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The featured steam engine this week is from the pages of the March-April 1957 issue of the Iron-Men Album Magazine. Early traction engines have mostly disappeared because they quickly became old technology at the end of the nineteenth century, and they were discarded when they were replaced by larger, more powerful engines. The scrap drives of two world wars recycled these old oddities. This little Lane & Dyer (sic) engine has an unusual valve gear arrangement that you do not see on more modern engines. It is a Stephenson gear, but the eccentrics are mounted outside the crank disc, rather than on the crankshaft. I have seen this arrangement on one other engine, a Harrison that escaped the scrap drives by being buried in an old river channel. It is on display at Midwest Old Threshers every year at Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, and last fall it was actually fired up and operated.

UPDATE!

The little engine in the black and white photo is an Owens, Lane & Dyer Co. engine. This firm built its first engine in 1873. There is a brief writeup about this company in the Encyclopedia of American Steam Traction Engines by Jack Norbeck, and you can also find information about this company on Google.