On Thu 08 Sep 2005 06:27:10p, Tim Mullen wrote in
:

You weren't in Williams Grove, Pennsylvania, were you?
Last Saturday my dad & I went to a steam-up there and saw them
running their sawmill powered by an old steam tractor. Waaay
cool. Must've had a dozen or twenty steam engines prowling
the grounds.

Wisconsin. Those folks call it a Thresheree. Probably because that's what
they called it when they had the first one, exactly fifty years ago. The
guy working alongside me said he was 54, and he'd been to every one of
'em.
:-)

Steam engines and antique gas tractors all over the place. Hunerds of
'em. Little bitty homemade jobs with old VW frames and pretty much
fullsized railroad locomotives with steel tires. And they did run the
mill with those things, hooked up to the belt drive. The exhibitors took
turns, giving us a different engine every three or four hours. There was
a big three-story, steam driven pile driver. Blacksmith shop. Oldtime
wood shop. Little narrow-track steam train that circled the grounds and
big steam engine tractors with wagons for the park shuttles. Huge flea
market. A big belt-driven horsepower tester so tractors could compete for
most horses produced. Nice place.

Rob, I've just found out they're not going to do cleanup this weekend.
They're holding a Steam School the weekend of the 23rd and are going to
operate the mill to give the students something with real loading that
needs governor control to work with. They'll leave the mill as is till
after that. That weekend will be the earliest I can get a photo, because
the park is locked up and I can't get in. I'm sorry.

(If you're wondering, I'm else24 when I'm not on my own computer)