The Steamtug Blog

Hi! Just got home from spending the weekend at the…  2010 GEELONG VINTAGE RALLY

As part of the agricultural society here in Geelong, we have a huge collection of vintage tractors, farm machinery and steam engines which we display as part of our annual agricultural show. Our collection is now so big and popular with the public, that we decided some years back to hold our own vintage rally and bring all our old toys out to play with. So this was the weekend. I rode my old Triumph and put it on display, then spent most of the weekend, back in my old position driving the traction engine around the arena.

She is now 107 years old being built in England in 1903. It’s a “Ransome, Sims and Jefferies” from Ipswich in South Eastern England. It was brought new to Australia and worked around our region before sitting tired and worn out under some old trees until the early 1970’s when the 2 sons of the original owner brought her home and got her going again. It was quite warm and thirsty work feeding wood into the firebox as we did laps of the arena.

Our club is also famous for it’s collection of Jelbart tractors. (Not sure how many…) They were built in Ballarat in central Victoria with their most famous tractors being produced around the 1920’s. With their patented “air scavenge” 2 stroke crude oil engine, these tractors were renown for the pulling power with old Frank Jelbart challenging any other manufacturer to a pulling competition, but there were never any takers. My most fond memories of these tractors, is when the air/fuel mixture is run slightly lean, the “hit and miss” governor starts to suck in fuel with the engine trying unsucessfully for a few strokes until a nice big “bomb” of explosive mixture has filled the exhaust and silencer, then when she finally does fires… “BOOM” it goes off like an atomic bomb and scares 7 different colors of shit out of any nearby unsuspecting member of the public! We had several of these out this weekend, with one belted up to an old chaff cutter with the boys feeding in straw to be cut up into chaff and making the old engine work.

There were several vintage cars, and Jamie made a bet with Tom, that there was so much room under the bonnet of his 1960 Morris Minor, that he could fit inside with the bonnet closed. So we all stood around laughing as he tried!

It was a great weekend. Wanna see more? Check out these U-tube links from the show.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUzHdhgQek0&feature=email

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFD2ee_mbbQ&NR=1