Montana Memories

By Staff
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Photo 1
Photo 1
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Photo 4
Photo 4
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Photo 2
Photo 2
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Photo 3
Photo 3

I’ve collected photos of steam and gas tractors for years,
and thought I should share a few with the readers of GEM.
For the record, I do own a few old one-lunger gas engines – mainly
to prove to the dyed-in-the-wool gas engine men in our local
old-iron club that I am not partial to steam!

The photo 2 is  just above shows an early Aultman-Taylor
gas tractor in Kansas, its compressor pump handle for pneumatic
starting leaning forward. A reserve air tank is located to the rear
of the handle, and the box forward of the compressor handle is a
belt-driven mechanical lubricator with lines running to the
engine’s moving parts.

The photo 1 at the top of the page shows four Campbell
Corp.-owned Aultman-Taylor tractors harvesting grain on one of
Campbell’s southeastern Montana farms. The Campbell Corp. of
Montana and Texas boasted the largest wheat farm in the world at
this time. Campbell is purported to have owned about 30 of these
late-style, round-radiator gas tractors.

The photo 4  was taken in 1921, and shows 14 Aultman-Taylor
tractors plowing 640 acres in one day on the Campbell wheat farm
near Hardin, Mont. This was a publicity stunt done for the
Aultman-Taylor advertising department, which stated, ‘There
were no stops due to the tractors.’

This last photo 3 shows a late-style, fan-cooled radiator 30-60
Aultman-Taylor near Havre, Mont. My friend Paul Thompson,
Lewistown, Mont., owns over a dozen of these Aultman-Taylor
round-style radiators, taken from where the Campbell tractors were
scrapped in southeastern Montana.

Contact engine and tractor enthusiast Gary Yaeger at: 1120
Leisha Lane, Kalispell, MT 59901, or e-mail: yaegerg@in-tch.com

  • Published on Feb 1, 2004
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