Thomson Road Steamer

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Oliver Hyde’s American Overland Steamer

In 1871, an improved version of Scotland’s Thomson road engine was built at San Francisco’s Aetna Iron Works. Called the American Overland Steamer, it used Hyde’s patented improvement to Thomson’s famous rubber-tired wheels. This engine was designed to haul ore and supplies in Utah. During the trial run there, Hyde was unable to find enough good water to operate the boiler. It was not practical to operate the American Overland Steamer on the route in Utah that the engine was designed for.

Returning to California in 1871, Hyde then contracted with the Tidelands Reclamation Co. of Oakland to use what Pacific Rural Press reported as his “successful California Road Locomotive” to seed 2,000 acres of wheat on reclaimed land in Sutter County. In 1885, Hyde told the readers of Pacific Rural Press of his experience developing a steam plow for the Oakland company. After it had been determined the Thomson engine “did not have sufficient power to do the job,” he decided to build an engine with “sufficient power to do the work.”

Over the next four years, Hyde improved his plowing engine, increasing the power of the engine from 20 HP to 45. This was accomplished by increasing the size of the engine and the boiler’s diameter from 4 feet to 6. He also improved traction by increasing the driving wheels from 4 feet in diameter to 6. The width of the rim was increased to 30 inches.

Hyde investigated a variety of rotary plows. However, in the final season he used a gang plow 13 feet wide with a hydraulic lift. Hyde stated that after having spent over $40,000 between 1871 and 1875 to develop a steam plow, in the last season his machine “plowed about 800 acres, wore out the drive-wheel gearing and shattered the wheels. It has rested at that.”

As was the experience of the Williamson engines in the early 1870s, the severe conditions found in plowing dry, dusty soil was also a significant factor in the demise of Hyde’s steam plow.

Robert Thomson’s Achievement

Civil engineer Robert William Thomson, of Edin-burgh, Scotland, was the first to successfully demonstrate pneumatic tires, in 1846, and the first to build a road steamer, in 1867, that used solid vulcanized tires. A number of these rubber-tired Thomson Road Steamers were manufactured by Tennant & Co., of Leith, Scotland, under his personal supervision.

Born at Stonehaven in 1822, he became well known for his successful road steamers that were exported in large numbers, but not used as road engines in England because of the “red flag” act that required a person to walk in front of steam powered vehicles traveling on common roads. Thomson road engines built in Scotland and England are documented in several publications, including Steam on Common Roads by William Fletcher, published in 1891, and reprinted in 1972.

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