While nitromethane may be the most exotic thing powering piston engines in the world today, steam is still the most powerful. Steam engines don’t stall, they explode. Consider this, a steam engine like the one in this tractor makes maximum torque at about 1 RPM. When the volume of steam filling the bore has to cram itself in there so hard as to move the load behind it, the steam engine is at its most brutally powerful. That is when you see this tractor chugging down the pulling course and the engine lugs down, it isn’t dying, it is digging in.
We admire the operator of this ancient machine because he had the chutzpah to keep the throttle open when the front of the tractor was off the ground. As you may well imagine, this is a very heavy hunk of pig iron and hanging the front end in the air, as cool as it looks, is dangerous as all get out because if something were to happen and that thing came down, it would be ugly as hell. The huge cast iron parts that form the axles and other pieces under this machine don’t bend, they snap. When that happens you have a real mess on your hands.
Steam is still an amazingly important part of our everyday lives and it is a substance that modern culture has long lost respect for. Harnessing it changed the world a couple hundred years ago and drove the manufacture of things like piston bores, connecting rods, and other pieces that we take for granted as everyday things. Steam is an unstoppable force…unless you have a relief valve like this guy.
Lots of credit to the operator here as he never gives up!
