IRON MEN AND THEIR EXPERIENCES WITH STEAM

November/December 1980
Billy M. Byrd 
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369 S. Harrig Street, Madisonville, Kentucky 42431

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EXPERIENCES WITH STEAM

Carl Donahoo was born in Daviess County, Kentucky, April 24, 1903. He bought a 12 HP Compound Russell when he was 18 years old and steamed tobacco plant beds for 10 to 12 years. One time the front flue sheet started to give him trouble. He pulled it behind a road grader to the McClean County Highway garage to have it welded. The welder blew the light transformer putting the lights out in Calhoun, Kentucky, so he gave up and the engine was sold for scrap.

Carl farmed and ran a 65 HP Case for a Mr. Elec Ayers, threshing wheat and hulling clover for several years. About this time he went to work for International Harvester and bought a 16 HP Advance but sold it before he could bring it home. He used a 12 HP portable Gaar Scott to steam cars of molasses for a feed mill.

Billy Byrd and Carl Donahoo in front of the 16-60 Nichols & Shepard after a 28-hour trip from Calhoun to Madisonville, Kentucky, August 1968.

In the late 20's he bought a 50 HP Case sitting in a horse lot where the Owensboro, Kentucky Airport is located. He reflued it and drove it to Calhoun, his home, and steamed plant beds with it. In 1929 the Oliver people took over the Nichols and Shepard Company and shortly after Mr. Donahoo bought a 16-60 D.C. rear mounted engine which had been turned back to the company. It was located at W. Louisville, Kentucky, 12 miles from Calhoun. He liked not to have gotten it home. It stalled on every hill because the boiler was full of mud. He could hardly remove the hand hole plates, as the mud was so hard and it took him three days to rod it out. With this engine he steamed plant beds using a 121/2 yard pan charging 41/2 cents a yard. He steamed with the Nichols and Shephard until 1964 and from 1964 to 1977 with a 65 Case portable that he pulled with a tractor. At the end he was getting 18? a yard with 16-2/3 yard pan. When threshing wheat with the N&S engine he pulled a 28 x 50 Keck-Gonnerman separator and threshed wheat, beans and oats. When he quit threshing in 1943 he was using a 22 x 36 McCormick-Deering tractor pulling a 28 x 48 Case separator that he had restored after being damaged.

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