The Steamtug Blog

They say “practice makes perfect” and we may have done this 99 times before, but this time we got it right! With crowds thronging from far and wide, including England, Canada, America, Colac and other exotic destinations, and traffic grid locking the whole of central Victoria, we hosted the Lake Goldsmith steam rally for the 100th time! Read on…. for the details!

Each day, as the sun gets higher in the sky, the solar panels on the shed roof begin to make a profit, and the hops growing on the back fence jumps out of the ground with the excitement of the approaching summer,  old men all over Australia were pulling vintage engines, tractors, cars and motorbikes out of their sheds in preparation for the 100^th Lake Goldsmith steam rally! People had been talking about this for 2 years! “I think I’ll get the old Jelbart Tractor going for the 100th rally” was heard around the bar of local pubs everywhere.

The usual roll up of about 8 to 12 engines on average, swelled in number as more and more low loaders arrived, and the caravan of engines doing the road run from Melbourne reached their destination, with an unbelievalbe 44 engines on the rally ground for the grand parade… something unheard of at any rally outside the Great Dorset steam rally in the west of England. I even convinced the owner of the traction engine from Geelong Showgrounds, to lend me his engine for the weekend. Trevor said he had never thought of taking it, but was so delighted by the idea, that he went halves in the cost of the truck to get it to the rally. And since he is over 80 years old and can’t get cover for the compulsory public liability insurance, we entered it in my name.

The engine generated some interest, as it’s quite a rare thing and is never seen outside the showgrounds at Geelong. It’s a 1903 Ransome, Simms & Jefferies, 7 nominal horsepower traction engine. I thought it was the only one in Australia, but got told by a little old lady from Tasmania that there is another at Dover, in the South of Tassie. So it’s now 109 years old and the boiler is not in good shape, but can still generate enough steam pressure to drive around. Somebody told me what a shame someone doesn’t take it on as a project and spend some big dollars and bring the boiler into the 21st century. But as I pointed out, it normally just sits at the Geelong Show putting over, or going for a walk like a majestic old man in the grand parade. He doesn’t have to do much in the way of work, and so remains quietly retired as an old invalid wise man, looking at all the younger internal combustion tractors.

When I arrived up there Friday after work, I found him lonely and cold in the paddock down the back of the rally ground. The wood supplied for the rally, turned out to be complete rubbish. Apparently there had been quite a few tons of wood delivered to the rally ground prior to the big event, that had been stolen. So the stuff we had was so green, you had to shake the koalas out before you put it in the boiler, to avoid them going through and blocking up the tubes. I checked the firebox after 30 minutes only to find everything still cold, and the wood inside just turning black and dark, and refusing to burn. Any coals that dropped down to the bottom of the firebox quickly burned away and the whole lot just went cold and tried to stop. It was some special kind of fire proof wood! We mixed some other stuff in to generate a bed of hot coals on the bottom, and with some extra heat under it, progress was made. But steaming around required keeping the firebox full to let the wood at the top cook before it would burn. Everyone was complaining… but we got the job done despite this.

As crowds started to flock into the rally ground early on Saturday morning, we slowly got steam up after fighting with keeping the fire alight. With the extra time we had while the fire slowly cooked, we started looking at the big red box on wheels located right next to us in the parking area. It was an old Ransome’s thrasher made by the same company as our engine in Ipswich, East Anglia in merry old England, and looked like an interesting piece of kit. With enough steam raised to go for a walk, we ventured out onto the rally ground where I saw one of the rally organisers, Mr Turbo Tonsils, the expert with the microphone who tells stories about all the equipment at the grand parade. I asked if he knew who owned the Ransome’s thrasher, and would they mind if I hooked it on the back of my engine, as it would be great to see the 2 machines from the same company, and quite rare, together. He replied “It’s my thrasher, and that’s exactly what I brought it here for! Go ahead!!!” So we went back and with some difficulty getting the draw bar attached, hooked on, oiled up the axles and took her for a drag.

Many people commented on this combination, and during the grand parade, special mention was made about how this pair would have been seen early last century going from farm to farm as a contract thrashing team. The grain would have been cut from the paddocks in sheaths, loaded onto horsedrawn dray, and pitchforked up onto the top of the thrasher, where the man at the top would cut the strings and feed it into the drum where all the seed is shaken away and blown out onto a heap for another team to bale up for straw, while sacks of grain are graded and filled at the back. I was thinking how interesting this all was until he announced that it had come from a farm near Dunkeld and the owner had fallen in and lost his leg in the drum mechanism. Yuk…. I hope they got it out!

And the crowds just got bigger, and bigger… they were expecting maybe 3000 to 4000 people. Instead more than 10,000 people turned up! The narrow country lanes became grid locked! Bill and Ben the men at the carpark entrance with their lollypop “stop/go” signs carefully directing the traffic got a surprise when the local police came rushing down the wrong side of the road with lights and sirens blazing. They got out and yelled “Do you know you have cars backed up in all direction for 15 kilometres around this site? The whole of central victoria is grid locked thanks to you wallies!” And the copper took the stop/go sign, put Ben across his knee and broke it across his bum! (ok… I made that bit up…) They took control and just let everyone drive in, and work out the parking money, and enterance fees later, getting all the traffic cleared.

Nobody expected such a turn up. The rally programs for 3 days… gone on the first day! The souvenir rally badges commemorating the 100th rally were sold out by lunchtime on the first day. I saw one there in the morning and thought I would get one later. All gone! The ques for food were 200 metres out the door of the shed! It was a warm day and all the drinks went! The boy scouts who were selling the drinks came up with a little side line of frozen flavoured ice sticks from the supermarket. They had heaps of them and took them out into the crowd to sell. All gone in 30 minutes! Unbelievable!   And it was just the first of 3 days! As I went around in the grand parade, I saw many people I knew in the crowd, but when it was over, I couldn’t find anyone with such a huge crowd!

Steam Shovels

I took a keg of beer up and we gave it a good go on the Friday night while watching the new steam shovel being prepared for lifting the bucket off the ground for the first time. I used to work in the quarry where this shovel came from, and remember seeing it sitting idle and wondering why it was never scrapped. The old quarry manager Max Parker, would never let it go, even though the boiler had been condemned back in 1960 because of a massive crack that had developed in the copper firebox. Wow… that copper box must have worth an absolute fortune as scrap, but old Max would not let it go. One of the old workers told me once, that Max was mad! Because one day when the crusher broke down and there was no work for the blokes in the quarry, Max made them paint the old steam shovel with sump oil. Well, we really appreciate it now! Thanks Max!!!

But one day when the scrap man was cleaning up some stuff around the yard, he left with the bucket and dipper arms from the old Bucyrus shovel and Max was furious! He tried to get it back but was too late. So now the shovel has been donated to Lake Goldsmith, and my mate Rabbit (his Mum calls him Warren) organised a team of blokes up in central NSW at Oberon at bend up and rivet some steel plate to manufacture a new back and dipper arms. And I was there to see it hoisted off the ground for the first time! But coming back down, it crashed back to Earth as parts of the brake mechanism burst into bits and fell off the ground. The bucket hit hard, and the cable un-rolled off the drum like a ball of string dropped off the ground. But working until 2am yet again, the champion Rabbit, got it all back together with a new fabricated steel bracket to replace the worn out old casting.

The shovel had been donated only 2 years ago, with a 5 year plan to get it going, but with a lot of hard work, the team had it in steam to celebrate this historic rally and the first operation of the steam shovel. With modern welding techniques, the boiler inspector looked at the firebox crack, ordered it to be ground out and welded back up, and signed off the certificate to steam it! And to think how many other engines had gone to scrap being condemned because nobody would believe you could ever weld up stuff like that…

I know these 2 steam shovels well… as I said I had done my apprenticeship as a steam engine driver working for the same company. And when the first shovel arrived at Goldsmith, I became a member and put it back together and drove it until I left to work in Western Africa for a few years. But now my mate Phillip swings around the 90 tons of Ruston steam shovel. And to commemorate the first steaming of the Bucyrus shovel, the Ruston took a bottle of champagne in her teeth, and swung it to break on the bucket of the Bucyrus shovel. We all laughed, and every steam whistle in the place blew with excitment… including me on the Ransome’s traction engine. see the video clip here! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFYvukK-ygM

The only disaster for the whole weekend? Was when the beer keg ran out very early on Saturday night! Damn.. there never seems to be enough beer for these occasions! I must also say thanks to Trevor for letting me play with  his engine, and sorry to all those who waved at me from over the fence that I didn’t get to talk and say Gidday to.

If you would like to read the article I wrote for the Geelong Historical Society about steam shovels, you can find it here. They asked me to do a talk at their meeting last year, then condense it into an article for their newsletter.

The steam shovels of the Geelong Cement works