THE STEAM ENGINE COLLECTING OF GLEN J. BRUTUS
January/February 2000
Dr. Robert T. Rhode
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40 HP Case no. 32463 owned by Glen Brutus. His family comes out to admire. As seen in the May/June 1955 issue of IMA.
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4745 Glenway Avenue Cincinnati, Ohio 45238-4537
In 1955, American author Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote, 'One
cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach.' With
equal truth, she might have written, 'One cannot collect all
the beautiful Case steam engines in America.' All the same,
Glen J. Brutus of Pine Village, Indiana, collected as many Cases as
he could.
The peaceful 1950s had just begun. Home from harrowing
experiences in World War II, Glen attended the Indiana State Fair
in 1950. At a booth, he picked up a copy of The Iron-Men
Album, a magazine devoted to steam engines, primarily those
used for agricultural purposes. Glen's memories of steam power
extended back to his childhood. 'Jake St. John,' Glen
recalled during an interview on June 6, 1999, 'was running his
sixteen-horsepower Nichols and Shepard engine along the road. He
stopped that bugger and set me up on it.' Jake then took Glen
for a ride. 'That was in 1925 or 1926, along in there. I
hadn't started to school yet.' Even with his early
introduction to steam engines, Glen had not thought to buy one not
until he saw the Album, that is.
Bitten by the steam bug, Glen bought his first steamer in
Mexico, Missouri: a 40-horsepower Case traction engine, serial
number 34091, built on March 7, 1917. His father, Arba, disapproved
of collecting steam engines and warned Glen not to bring one to the
home farm. For that reason, Glen kept his new big toy at his
fiancee's parents' house in town.
Jessie Cook, an experienced steam man, and James Elmore, math
and science teacher who had helped his father farm with Gaar-Scott
engines, lent their expertise when Glen first learned to fire up
his Case. 'About a year later, I got brave enough to take it
out to the home place,' Glen said. By then, his father had
relented on the issue of the steam-engine hobby, commenting to
Glen's in-laws, 'He could be doing something a lot
worse.' Later, Glen sold the 40 Case to Leonard Mann, also of
Pine Village, who made it the centerpiece of an annual threshing
bee at the Mann farm. The engine sold again, this time at auction
in 1988.
On his honeymoon, Glen bought a 6-horsepower Case portable,
serial number 19661, boiler number 8382, built in 1908, in Attalla,
Alabama. T. S. 'Windy' Stingle, who as a young man attended
one of B. B. Clarke's steam schools held in Indianapolis, had
told Glen where to find the engine.
Engines were in Glen's blood. After all, his grandmother
Brutus's sister's husband, George Clawson, was an employee
of the Atlas Engine Works in northeastern Indianapolis. Glen often
traveled to Kentucky on weekends to look for engines. He crossed a
river on a ferryboat which operated by means of a wooden lever
which worked back and forth along a rope strung through it from one
shore to the other. On a tip from Roselle Raisch of Mt. Healthy,
Ohio, Glen found another 6-horsepower Case portable, serial number
24437, built in 1911, in Nicholasville, Kentucky. To get the
engine, Glen traded a 23-90 Baker boiler on rubber wheels; the
Baker's new owner wanted the boiler to melt tar. Eventually,
Glen sold the more recent Case portable to Leonard Mann.
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