ENGINES, ENGINES, AND MORE ENGINES

Enlarge Image Image Gallery 25hp. Gaar Scott single owned by Ralph Meeby at the alton Reunion. 1955. See Richard Rorvig's report

R. D. 3, Rothsay, Minnesota

I am sending you my $2.00 for next year's subscription to the ALBUM. I think it is a fine magazine and I am looking forward to the time when it will be both bigger and a monthly magazine.

I have not seen anything in the ALBUM lately about what is going on around my part of the country. We have had two fine reunions here both last year and this year. One was held at Dalton, Minnesota, which is the Central Minnesota Steam Threshers' Club which was held on the seventh and eighth of October this year. The other was held at Rollag, Minnesota, on the first of October and it was the Western Minnesota Steam Threshers' Reunion. They were both large and well attended reunions. The Rollag Reunion had stack threshing, clover hulling, and a sawmill, plus a large display of model engines, most of which were one-third scales. They also had some model separators and a scale model sawmill, all of which were very beautiful pieces of workmanship.

The Dalton Reunion was a big event also. They had twelve large stacks of grain which were threshed during the two days by two Minneapolis threshers, one of which was a 36-58 machine with stack wing feeders, the other a 40-64. Both of these machines were steel machines and in top-notch condition. They also had a steam plowing event which caused quite a lot of excitement as it seems most people have not seen any steam plowing around here. This was done with a ten-bottom John Deere platform plow pulled by a 25hp. Advance Rumely steam engine. The weather was unfavorable so it was impossible to do much plowing until the evening of the last day, so there was not as much done as anticipated. There was also a sawmill that was powered by a 25-75 Gaar-Scott single engine owned by George Melby. The second day it was run by a 25hp. single cylinder Wood Bros. engine owned by Nels Fossan. They also had models displayed. This reunion is sponsored, more or less, by four men who are George and Ralph Melby, Kenneth Bratvold, and Nels Fossan. Ralph owns a 25hp. double cylinder side-mounted Gaar-Scott and a 25hp. Gaar Scott single rear mounted with Canadian boiler. George owns a 25hp Gaar Scott rear mounted single also. Ralph and George own a 25hp Advance Rumely together. All of these engines are in perfect shape. Seeing as these two brothers own three Gaar-Scott engines between them, you can easily see why they call them the Gaar-Scott outfit. There was also a 25-85 Nichols & Shepard engine owned by Kenneth Bratvold. And the 25 Wood Bros. engine owned by Nels Fossan as already mentioned, which brought on a lot of comments by the visitors, as hardly anyone had seen a Wood Bros. engine. Nels also owns a 25-85 Nichols & Shepard which he hadn't had time to get ready for the reunion.