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North Norfolk News @nthnorfolknews
Sep 3
A traditional blessing took place last weekend which attracts farmers and communities alike, each year, when the local vicar performs a service and blesses ploughs and tractors, symbols of the work of ploughing, sowing and reaping carried out by the…
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I am currently reading Tom Swift And His Motorcycle, written somewhere around 1910 or so. It fascinates me to see how much the world has changed in only 100 years. Here’s a tiny sample passage that sort of sums up the state of the world at the time.

“That’s right, Master Tom. I’ll keep steam up in the boiler to-night, though we don’t really need it, as your father told me you would probably not run any machinery when he was gone. But with a good head of steam up, and a hose handy, I can give any burglars a hot reception…” said the old engineer, who had a living-room in a shack adjoining the boiler-room.

So all the machines in the shop are steam driven, it’s totally acceptable to hose down burglars with raw steam, and the engineer (who works for Tom Swift’s rich father) lives in a shack adjoining the boiler-room.

Oh, and in another interesting passage, Tom has the spark plug wire stolen from his motorcycle. Clever Tom is able to make a temporary substitute by using a piece of barbed-wire (wrapped in linen torn from his shirt for insulation). The substitute works fine until Tom is able to reach the next town and obtain a piece of copper wire ….from a plumber.

As I understand it, those tractors weren’t used so much for plowing, etc like modern tractors but more as mobile sources of power to belt-drive sawmills and other farm equipment. They could haul the equipment around in the field and power it.

Indeed, it’s as much a mobile boiler driving a flywheel as anything else.

The barn I played in as a kid had a Snidely Whiplash caliber buzz saw in it that my GF and his brothers used to haul out into the woods on skids during the winter, powered by a steam engine attached belt, and his brother had, up until he died back in 1996 or so, a boiler in his barn with a series of levers to engage/disengage leather drive belts for various tools (band saw, buzz saw, lathe, drill) in other parts of the barn.

I regret not being more interested but I was young and stupid then instead of just old and foolish now.

You have to appreciate how much the fella loves the old girl. Titaness in gold leaf.

We’ve actually seen demonstrations of that ploughing technique, with a single steam engine and the plough towed back and forth across the field on steel cables.

I hate to sound like someone’s granny. but let’s just say that, as a process, it wouldn’t meet today’s health and safety standards!

There are plenty of these old steam engines left in the UK and rallies right across the country held to show them off.

Uncle B, most of the things that made us civilized countries wouldn’t pass today’s health and safety standards.