Steam Show

Imagine a locomotive built for off track work and you have the steam engined 'tractors' of yesteryear. Each mammoth creation has a long, black barrelled body and puts off that distinctive coal smell.

Our fall festival has every year featured a living museum of glorious by-gone machinery. Threshing demonstrations, steam tractors, newer tractors and more. We visited a re-built general store resplendent with turn of the century advertising, a very early operator switch board, and an antique ice box. Across the dirt path from the general store was a working blacksmith's shop. Huge warehouses hold steam powered fire trucks used in our city a hundred years ago and a myriad assortment of massive (think a couple stories) turbines, engines, water wheels, and of course antique autos. One can ride on a quarter scale or a daringly 1/22 scale coal burning train or browse the aisles of wares in the flea market.

Perhaps the most enjoyable thing was the old church that was moved from its original location and lovingly restored. Organ music piped serenely out of it all afternoon while across the way a replica of a frontier school house stood complete with authentic desks culled from across the US, a surprisingly ornate pot bellied stove, and walls filled with the stories and pictures of people who went to and worked in one room prairie school houses. *swoon* It was so perfect like a movie set or better yet, the real thing!

Sadly I only got to go to one day of the all weekend festival because I'm feeling severely depressed and slept all day yesterday until nine pm. There's always next year. I have so many photos I did not get to take.