Spectacular!

Just? 50 horse power...
But that's almost the power of errr....
roughly ummm...
let me do the arithmetic
_{<fiddles about counting on claws>}
50 horses
Del

I drive by that old display in Waterville, Maine, several times a week...it's pretty cool.

That was when Engineers were real men! Machines like that are why I got into mechanical engineering. They are sooooo cool. You can see everything, and if you stare at it long enough you can figure out everything and you can see why things were done the way the were done.

The other super thing about this particular machine: It is PERFECT for the job it is designed for. It does more work than what it replaces could ever do (you can't fit 50 horses on 200 sq ft of forest floor), it is free to operate (burns "trash" vs. trying to feed 50 horses in a frozen woods), and it never gets tired. The only concern is not tipping it over - anything else is fair game given enough chain, cable, or rope - and an operator that can think on his feet.

I bet Mary Anne paid her keep in the first year of operation. I can see why he did not wait for the patent paperwork to come through: If they did not fire her as soon as possible (Thanksgiving Day sounds like the start of the logging season), they would have lost a season of her wonderful work.

Now they use diesel to do this sort of work, and it is pretty efficient, but they can't find diesel on the forrest floor, so you have to figure out a way to get a couple hundred gallons of fuel per machine to the middle of nowhere every day. Is that REALLY progress? I guess when you figure in the maintenance, safety and downtime. A steam machine in the wilderness has to be fired 24-7 as well during the freezing season.

We should all strive to be this thoughtful in our designs...

Awesome - the video is great too - you can bet they were having fun getting the thing up & running again

I got a chance behind the throttle of one at Clark's Trading Post. On a small hill it coasted down fast enough to scare me. I was shocked at how quickly it picked up speed! One can only think about the times that the driver bailed, leaving the fireman and engineer racing down the hill out of control. All communication is with two whistles.