THE STEAM ENGINE COLLECTING OF GLEN J. BRUTUS
(Page 7 of 8)
January/February 2000
Dr. Robert T. Rhode
Once, Ed and Ray Smolik, Justin Hingtgen, and Glen made a wintry
trip to Canada to pick up an engine and parts. Glen said, 'We
were close to Hudson Bay Junction. We unloaded Justin's
ton-and-a-half pickup from his lowboy. It was so cold that we had
to use heater plugs to get the trucks to start in the morning. Ed
and I took off with the pickup. Justin and Ray were going to load a
thirty-six Rumely somewhere else. Ed and I had to scoop snow to get
in to the farmer's place, there on the Saskatchewan-Alberta
border. The farmer had four-hundred head of cattle. He was feeding
them sheaves of oats. It was twenty or thirty below zero. The
Smoliks had bought that farmer's 110 Case to part out. Its
firebox had swollen from being frozen. The farmer's stock tanks
were the 110 Case driver wheels with cement poured around them. In
its day, the engine had been used to power an irrigation system. A
three-cornered area there in Canada was short on rainfall most of
the time, so they told us.'
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Glen continued, 'After we got the truck loaded, the farmer
says, 'I think you can get across the river on the ice.' I
went ahead of Ed Smolik, who was driving the truck across the
Saskatoon River, and I was tapping the ice with a scoop.'
On another occasion, Glen and Justin Hingtgen went to the West
to close a deal on a 30-horsepower under mounted Avery owned by a
farmer. Justin wanted the extension rims, and Glen wanted the
engine. Justin and Glen arrived at their destination, ready to
load. The farmer looked at Justin and said, 'I thought you were
dead.' Justin was taken aback. 'I already sold the Avery,
' the farmer continued. 'A man came here to look at it,
and, when I told him you were going to buy it, he told me you were
dead. I figured you weren't coming back, so I sold it to
him.'
Glen did not allow his frustration and disappointment at losing
the 30 Avery to dampen his enthusiasm for Avery engines. Once, he
drove to Ponca City, Oklahoma, to see a 40-horsepower Avery under
mounted on a butt-strap boiler. He was surprised to discover that
there was not much difference between a 30 and a 40 Avery.
It was nicer weather when, on a Sunday morning after church
services, Glen drove to Rockville, Indiana, to see an engine beside
a jailhouse. The 23-90 Baker traction engine, serial number 17313,
built in 1923, was used as an emergency heating plant for the jail.
Glen looked in the firebox and found a blister there. Back in Pine
Village, Glen told Windy Stingle about the engine, and Windy
'went down and bought it.' The Baker had a Reeves flywheel
on it. Windy parked the engine beside Tony Arrigo's blacksmith
shop, where Windy planned to have the boiler retubed and other work
done. The engine rested there for years. Meanwhile, Windy traded
the steam gauge and whistle to Al New. Later, Alvin Kline of
Millersburg, Ohio, acquired the engine. At the recent Kline
auction, the Reeves flywheel was sold. The engine is now owned by
Ray Miller of Dundee, Ohio.
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