3 Washington St. Brattleboro, Vermont 05301
Dublin is a lovely, picture-postcard New England town nestled in
the hills of southern New Hampshire. It is also the site of the
annual Granite State Gas and Steam Engine Association Show that is
held each year, the first weekend after Labor Day. A quiet little
show for this quiet little New England town? Heck, no! The 1986
show featured 14 acres of machinery with 402 exhibitors.
Originally held on Dublin’s Common, the show did have modest
beginnings 15 years ago. For all you non-New Englanders, the Common
is the town’s park, usually located in the heart of town. The
first show sported a hefty ten exhibitors. It has obviously
outgrown the Common and now meets in a huge field east of town.
For all its 15 years the Dublin show has been sponsored and
hosted by the Dublin Fire Department. Jackie Corkins, editor of the
Granite State Exhaust, gives much credit to the Dublin Fire
Department. She says, ‘When we first started using the field we
use now, it was sandy and dusty. The fire department used money
earned from the shows to improve the field, buying fertilizer and
special grass. They built a foodstand, too. It’s now a very
pleasant show site.’
September 6 & 7, 1986 brought mostly good weather and lots
of show-goers. If you passed by the east end of field, you might
have heard Ernest Hallowell of Augusta, Maine bending the ears of
an interested group of folks.
‘Most of the people that come around to these shows and look
at these machines don’t know their real meaning. These first
internal combustion engines came onto the scene about the turn of
the century. Before that everything on the farm had been done by
horses. These machines changed everything!’
As one rapt listener commented, ‘If only they could
talk…’ Mr. Hallo-well’s reply was, ‘What a story
they’d tell.’
Part of the story that these engines tell now is of the hard
work and devoted care expended in turning piles of forgotten iron
into beautiful, smooth-running machines like those pictured in
these pages.
Another part of the story is of the hours spent in creating
models. Mr. Hallowell is shown in a photo in this article with his
? scale model of an 1897 8 HP Callahan Sideshaft Engine.
He says, ‘It took me more than 350 hours to build that
model. You see how the sideshaft stops when it goes up on the
governor? This was an experiment in engine-making. There are only
three makes of engine that have that feature.’
The antique engine story today is also one of lively shows with
friendly people, terrific food, the buying, selling and swapping of
engines, and lots of fun.
Anyone with questions about the Dublin show or New
Hampshire’s other two shows at Dunstable and Lebanon, should
contact Russell W. Hobby, 53 Summer Street, Laconia, New Hampshire
03246.