1910 Days/Old Steamshovels

[Dana Deering]

1910 Days has been kicked around for a while and it would be fun to pull it off!  We might even get the Maine Farmers Draft Horse Club to bring some of their teams and equipment and demonstrate farming techniques from the 19-teens.  If we could find out what the Turner Center Creamery Ice Cream containeers looked like we could reporduce some and make homemade ice cream at AC and deliver it to Sheepscot in authentic containers.  Maybe by then we'll have a steam powered sawmill, and I'll have found my steam shovel and rock crusher and we could crush rock and load it onto flatcars at AC.  Of course the crusher will be run by Bob Longo's Steam Traction engine, once he finds one.  Just imagine all we could do and teach!

[Dana Deering]

Here's "my" shovel.  How'd that be for 1910 Days?  Suppose they'd miss it?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/basicbill/2768841070/in/set-72157606733906745/

[Steve Klare]

Man!, That looks like fun!

I go to a festival in Pennsylvania every couple of years that has a lot of old technology going: steam traction engines, antique cars, steam and horse powered sawmills, glass blowing and an old time foundry.

It's so popular they have to park the people a few miles away and bus them to the site.

Of course a festival like this at Alna Center could be reached by train!

[Dana Deering]

Can you imagine how an event like that at AC could grow?  And yes, the best part would be that everyone would get there by train!   Oh, and the engine noise you hear in the video is not the shovel!

I always wanted to be Mike Mulligan, even if it was just for a day...

Dana

[Stewart "Start" Rhine]

Dana,  Nice shovel!!  You posted some great ideas for an old time day at the railroad.  An event like that would bring the families and railfans alike.  As Steve Z. said, you have to bring in the daisey pickers to have a true success.  Each year Cindy and I go to an Amish farmers horse pull in York County, Pa.  It draws a large crowd from Md and Pa.  There's also a real nice steam show in Northern Maryland that has steam tractors, steam rollers and lots of hit and miss / flywheel engines.  The show has been held there every Fall since the early 1950's.   There's a flea market that takes about 4 acres.  This year I'm going to take my 1929 AA Express truck just in case I find a nice Fairbanks Morse 3 horse engine that would run a track car...

[Duncan Mackiewicz]

Dana,

I do believe I've seen bits and pieces of a unit close to that vintage at a contractor's yard in my area.  I doubt he'd part with it and if he did it possibly could be in a condition that would preclude rehab.  But..........

Duncan

[Dave Buczkowski]

Dana;
   If you tell me where that shovel is I can get together a few boyos from Providence and see what we can arrange with the owner.... He might be convinced to sell at a reasonable cost.
Dave

[Stephen Hussar]

Duncan, the gentleman with the shovel 'near you' may be inclined to sell or donate if he knew the item was going to a good home...

[Pete "Cosmo" Barrington]

Wow...
I think I've now proven that there's some sort of cosmic, metaphysical link involved in 2'ing, or Maine railroading in general,
that borders on telepathy.
First, when I lived in Portland, I envisioned 2'ers running on or near the waterfront.
Almost as soon as I moved to Ellsworth, the MNGRR moved into the old Portland Co. site. (Coincidence?)
Then, as I sat watching bluberries roll past me on a convayor in Elsworth, II dreamed of the tracks through town seeing trains again.
Lo and behold, the DESRR is no longer a dream! (Ok,.. TWO co-incidences!)
Recently, after many, many visits to Sheepscott/AC I  had the epiphany:
"Albee's field would be a GREAT spot for a music festival!"
 Now, I was thinking bluegrass/folk, and or blues, but definitely something periodicic.
But you guys trumped me with "1910 Days!"
Just, when you do plan it in earnest, don't forget to invite musicians!

[Mike Fox]

For those with it, the RFD TV is an awesome place to see these tractors and shovel in operation. I think the show was called Antique Tractors but I don't recall. A quick search of their site http://www.rfdtv.com/ shows a listing called Classic Tractor Fever. Sometimes the have what is called a Threshers reunion on there that has the steam shovel, tractor and locomotive, all on the same grounds.
Mike

[James Patten]

Not periodic, but at the end of September the Sheepscott Valley Conservation Association (SVCA for short) and the WW&F are jointly hosting a "Septemberfest" at Alna Center field, with German food and presumably German music.  Possibly plenty of Lederhosen.

So the field is starting to get some use.

[Duncan Mackiewicz]

Steve,

I can ask but the guy is a contractor who over the years has amassed a huge collection of "old stuff" like machinery and toys like the shovel. He actually created a multi-floored museum to house all this stuff and each of the floors is a "for hire" banquet facility.  That being said, I'm rather doubtful he'd part with it but there's no harm in asking.

Duncan

[Keith Taylor]

Possibly Andy Swift in Hope, Maine could be convinced to run his 65 hp Case traction engine at such an event? I'd bring mine, but it is only 2' tall.
Keith

[Josh Botting]

Believe it or not in Wiscasset, there is a farm which uses only Horse power to do all of the work.  No motors at all in any of their operations.  It is neat to se the horses out working the fields.  They also do haying with the horses as well.  Their produce is very good.

Dana, there is a bucket for a shovel, a good sized one, at the  Bath Industrial Sales in west bath.

A few years back, I was up in Amish country in northern maine, there they have a good size steam tractor up there.  They say that it runs in the fall for harvest season. 

[John Kokas]

Josh,

As a "Pennsy" person, I would be willing to bet that your "horse" farmer is Amish but the more northern folks are Mennonite by the use of mechanized equipment.  The true Amish don't believe in steam, gas, or diesel powered equipment.  Also ditch the telephone, radio, etc.  They truely live as if it were 1808, not 2008.  What is amazing is that they are the most profitable per acre of all farmers in the U.S!  What do they know that we "modern" people don't?

John