[SEL] Nice Wheels/ cable plowing

[Curt]

Ya know Arnie, I've wondered if this was the case even with much less 
expensive gas engines. Take a 8 or 10 HP saw rig. That's 4 or 5000 
pounds of iron to pay for. In a few of days you can saw a winter's worth 
of wood. I could see where a group of farmers would have bought one and 
used horses to pull it from one farm to the other in a cooperative 
arrangement.

Knowing the size of the team of men required to run and support a steam 
traction engine, I suspect you are spot on about the cooperative effort.
Curt
P.S. I'm outta here in an hour of so. Duke Power just shut us down due 
to excessive power consumption. We've got 30 minutes to get below a 
kw-hr consumption rate and this means shutting the plant down and 
putting the furnaces on generator for the next 6 hours or so, 'till the 
household A/C usage subsides a little. Second or third shift will have 
the pleasure of starting the casting lines back up. That's about an 8 
hour process. Later.....

Arnie Fero wrote:

>Hi Curt,
>
>Rather than an individual farmer buying two traction engines and the cable
>plowing rig, I wonder if it might have been done on a local collective
>basis?  Maybe a couple of entrepreneurs who went farm to farm and did the
>cable plowing?  Perhaps something like what was done with threshing?
>
>See ya,  Arnie
>
>Arnie Fero
>Pittsburgh, PA
>fero_ah at city-net.com
>
>On Tue, 1 Aug 2006, Curt wrote:
>
>  
>
>>Have been to several steam shows here in the states and, to date, have
>>yet to see a steam traction engine with a cable setup under the belly.
>>So it might have been done, but it was sure on small scale. In our early
>>culture of entrepreneurial / no government involvement, what farmer
>>could afford to buy 2 traction engines!? It would be interesting to know
>>the extent that government subsidies were involved in cable plowing in
>>Australia.
>>    
>>
>
>_______________________________________________
>SEL mailing list
>SEL at lists.stationary-engine.com
>http://www.stationary-engine.com/mailman/listinfo/sel
>
>
>  
>