Williams Grove Steam Engine Association: 2009 Steam Show

The Williams Grove Steam Engine Association holds a yearly week long event that ends on Labor Day.  This was the Fifty First year for the event.  There are many pictures from the fiftieth year event in this collection.  Although the organization focuses on steam powered devices there are a significant number of internal combustion engine powered devices on site.  This year the event featured tractors by Oliver.  As a man who fell in love with the big yellow machines from Peoria and then worked for Caterpillar for 32 years I was amazed by the history surrounding the Oliver tractor and others I have researched.  I will not reiterate the Oliver story here because it is covered well on the web.  Caterpillar concentrated on BIG and Construction, Oliver looked at smaller niche machines.  See sites listed here if you are interested.  

Here are a couple of the original Oliver plows in front of the tent.  These were intended to be pulled by a team of horses. 

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Here is an Oliver 66 in the parade.  The female driver, once almost unheard of is no longer unusual.  I have seen wives, daughters, sisters and girlfriends.  But some of these gals are participants in the farm work.  For whatever reason they stay on the farm and work it.   I believe one of the drivers for this is their kids.  They see the farm life and environment as a place that is good to raise children and are willing to do the work it takes to make it happen.   They generally don’t have the brute strength of their male counterparts but they will generally work smarter to do the same job. 

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This Oliver OC-3 would not have survived long or been very useful in a heavy mining or construction environment in which the CAT D-8 operated but the size and structure made it useful and valuable in environments where its 31 inch gauge, the distance between the centers of the tracks allowed it to go.  It was originally purchased but the city of Weymouth Mass to remove snow from sidewalks, a place no D-8 or even D-5 – a smaller machine – could go.  The rubber cleats on the track allowed the tractor to operate on paved surfaces without destroying them.  

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There is a joke that you can tell a man from Caterpillar but you can’t tell him much.   As a “Caterpillar Man” I walked with the Caterpillar man swagger and knew the big machines we built even though I pushed bits and bytes around.  Don’t get me wrong, when the http took their tri-annual siesta (a.k.a. strike) we got into the act and did the job.  During ont of those times one warehouse foreman told two of us, “You guys from DP think you can do anything.”  DP BTW is the old term for IS – a.k.a. Computer Geeks that push pencils.  At that time we had done just about anything in the shop.  My colleague (a.k.a. accomplice) turned to him and said, “Can’t we?  Tell me what we haven’t done.”  There was silence. He took off on his mighty steed, a.k.a. a forklift he used for transportation.

When the High Drive tractor came out (late 1980’s) the CAT literature touted it as a great new idea.  Now years later I see this Oliver Tractor with the High Drive!   And the date is 1957 – at least twenty five years before the CAT high drive.  The tractor was produced by Oliver then shipped to Florida where it was modified as a high drive by another company.  I was told there were problems with the early ones, primarily structural weaknesses but these were overcome.   For anyone who is interested the High Drive has a disadvantage of the chain (the track unit) is longer and initially more expensive.  On the regular D-8 a track Group could go over $10,000.  The high drive track’s life is about 20% longer and more costly but there are several advantages offsetting this.  First the wear is spread over more links in the chain (the part you can’t see that holds the track together), shoes (the plates on the chain) and grousers (the ridges on the shoes).  As an aside the chain without shoes looks a lot like an oversized bicycle chain.  The high energy points of the chain to sprocket (the wheel that drives the chain that looks like a bicycle sprocket) are out of the dirt.  This reduces the abrasion that wears out the chain and the sprocket.  The contact with the idler (the un-driven wheel that the track runs around) on the front of a regular tractor and the front and back of a high drive is low energy by comparison and the wear of the chain and idler are smaller.  In addition, the idlers are cheaper when they do wear out.   So I give you the Oliver H6 High Drive.

As an aside, the reason for the Oliver high drive was primarily to get clearance for working row crops.  There was actually a version of this that used regular tractor tires with a drive mechanism that raised the tractor.  A higher tractor means more crop clearance (good) and a higher center of gravity – which means less stable on inclines.  They are called “roll overs” and the result without ROPS (Roll Over Protective Structures a.k.a. Cages) was all too often a dead farmer.

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This Oliver has interesting wheels – covered with rubber to allow it to run on paved roads.  It looks like the “outriggers” on the drive wheels were made to provide additional traction if the wheels sunk into soft soil, a neat idea.  Although I missed the sign on the tractor giving its age it is probably in the 1950’s.   Although I can’t find the levers on this tractor many of them had brake leavers for each rear wheel and a differential that would allow a wheel to be braked while allowing the other to get power to help in turning in the field.  This is the basis of how a track type tractor turns and is one of the reasons the H6 conversion shown in the earlier picture could be made.     

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Oliver’s first product was a plow that worked far better in the Midwest soil than previous ones.  This is not an Oliver but is much like the ones they produced.  Here is a two bottom plow like the ones that were used in 1930-1960 Pennsylvania farming.  Most tractors could pull two to three bottoms.  The wheels were spaced to allow the one on near the camera to ride in the furrow from the previous pass as a guide.  The first bottom would turn the soil into the open furrow and the second would turn the soil into the one just created.  Levers would allow the farmer to set depth and angles.  I believe the hitch (on the ground) is a breakaway that would release and prevent damage to the tractor and plow if it encountered too much resistance.   

These were displayed at the Williams Grove Steam Engine Meet – 2009.