My wife an I are heading North tomorrow. We have rented a lake cottage for the Labor Day weekend and will by joined by some close friends.
I am heading to
The Western Minnesota Steam Threshers Re-Union at Rollag, Minnesota on Saturday. This has been held at this vast and beautiful site every Labor Day weekend since 1954.
This year they are featuring the
Advance Rumley Oil Pull Tractors.
In the summer just short of 2000 retired machinists and mechanics camp out at this site by the Lake, and restore this old machinery. It is vast and has a train that runs round the site with frequent stops.
There are lots of fixed exhibitions with ancient mining engines and power plants. They have restored the old 1900 power plant from the Pabst Brewery circa 1900. This is a huge single cylinder steam engine two to three stories high. The fixed ancient steam engines are supplied from the central Montana boilers.
There is a large section devoted to early construction and mining equipment called the "Sand Pit". There is just a vast amount to take in. They have four of the V4 Wisconsin generator sets on display. I had one of these as my back up generator. Mine was actually in better shape then any of those, although they are not in bad shape. That generator was a good dependable unit, that always started right away when the power went out.
There are working steam saw mills, plowing demonstrations and much else, even a building devoted to antique radios from the earliest days of broadcasting.
For anyone in driving distance this is well worth attending. Driving distance is a wide area, as I think I have seen number plates from pretty much every state in the Union at Rollag.
