Thomson Road Steamer

Article Tools

Image Gallery

Print

E-mail

Comments

RSS

“After fighting the dust bravely for a long time, trying in every way to protect the machinery from its disastrous effect, it became evident that the objection was to a certain extent fatal. The same difficulty would present itself every year in most parts of the country. This, coupled with difficulties inherent in any system of steam plowing, caused the reluctant abandonment of the enterprise.”

This paper, explaining the difficulties that the Williamson traction engines experienced, primarily due to the dry, dusty soil of the American West, apparently did not receive much notice and was not widely discussed in other publications. The problem of dust for machinery that operated in dry and dusty fields continued to be a problem for later steam and gas traction engines, reducing the life span of all exposed gears and bearings.

Eventually, the use of enclosed gear trains and improved oil seals reduced this problem to an acceptable level. Of interest, the first commercially successful California traction engine, the 1889 Best-Remington engine, used a similar design to the Thomson engine, with an upright boiler suspended by the two driving wheels, a 2-cylinder steam engine and a single front wheel for steering, as did the 1871 Williamson-Thomson engine.

Was it all Worth It?

Williamson later explained why he had written the article in the 1878 Van Nostrand’s Magazine. “It may be asked why confess that the hard work of five years and the expenditure of so many thousands of dollars had resulted in a partial failure? One answer is that many of the objections could not be seen at the start, and indeed all that time and money to develop them.

“Another answer is that every engineer or manufacturer, engaged in so important an enterprise as steam plowing owes it to the hundreds of ingenious inventors who may follow him to give the results of his experience, be they successes or failures. In no other way will coming men take up the work where others leave off, but they will go over the same ground, which will lead only to disappointment and loss.

“No other American ever built 10 engines, or had such a large experience. Never did engineers and agriculturalists of such ability assist so heartily to command success, and in no country were the trials conducted with more perseverance and conscientiousness.

“The conclusion of all this is, that those who may be ambitious to invent a steam plow have now no excuse for wasting time or money,” Williamson concluded.

Jack Alexander is the author of Steam Power on California Roads and Farms, The First American Farm Tractors and The Caterpillar’s Roots, which are available through the Historic Construction Equipment Assn. website (http://www.hcea.net/v02/). Jack can be contacted by e-mail at jacklee@garlic.com

RSS | Comments | E-mail | Print