More than a few tears were shed at the Long Island Antique Power Association on Sunday morning as a dozen or so members gathered to watch a 1922 Peerless steam-powered tractor leave the site for the first leg of its journey to Middlefield, Ohio where it will have its boiler replaced at an Amish boiler works.
The club’s co-founder Susan Young echoed the thoughts of many of the members when she said, “I never thought I’d see this day come.”
The tractor has been on the association’s property for about 12 years but LIAPA didn’t own it during that time. Last year it was bequeathed to the association by its owner, longtime association member Cliff Foster of Sagaponack.
LIAPA members knew that the tractor’s boiler would no longer pass inspection and would need to be replaced and they had already begun raising money toward the expensive job. So far, they’ve managed to raise about half of the $60,000 needed for the massive repair job.
An anonymous donor contributed $20,000 and the rest of the money they’ve raised has come from donations and the group’s annual show and tractor pull. This year’s show will be July 7 and 8 on the grounds of the association.
When it returns in a couple of months, the 50 horse-power steam engine will be the only working steam-powered tractor on Long Island. The giant machine has to be hand-cranked to start and it will be hooked up to run the association’s working sawmill.
Young and her husband Bruce started LIAPA in their backyard after seeing a collection of antique tractors in Riverhead’s bicentennial parade. Now the association boasts a membership upwards of 300, from local enthusiasts to as far away as Virginia.
The association’s property holds dozens of antique tractors and other pieces of equipment including a steamroller once used in New York City by the Sicilian Asphalt Company.
Bruce Young said, “Steam was king for a long time on the farms until Ford made a gasoline-powered tractor in the ’20s. A 50 HP engine could work faster and longer than horses or mules.” To this day, he said lots of third world countries use steam-powered equipment so finding parts to fix broken machines in the association’s collection isn’t difficult.
Bill Pfeffer, the group member who runs the sawmill says that local builders will bring him large trees that they want to be sawn into boards. That brings money into the association’s coffers, too. The sawmill has been put to good use by LIAPA to build the newest addition to its museum-like grounds — a blacksmith shop. Scraps from the sawmill will serve as fuel for the tractor’s firebox.
Ron Grabowski, the blacksmith explained that everything in the blacksmith shop was designed to look and work as an old-fashioned hand-operated forge. The anvil sat atop a cutoff tree stump and he was anchoring another stump in the ground to which the shop’s vise would eventually be clamped.
As the Peerless was loaded aboard a large trailer — minus its smokestack and decorative canopy, the donor’s wife Lee Foster stood with a few other teary-eyed members for photographs.
“It’s fabulous to see these relics of history still running,” she said.
LIAPA is actively fundraising to reach the goal as soon as possible. All proceeds they bring in from the show July 7 and 8 will go towards bringing one of those relics back to life and into history as the only working steam tractor on Long Island.
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