ferrology
New Member
I have to confess had not heard of this forum, this thread is where a hunter of iron dinosaurs belongs!:notworthy
Everyday I see better stuff than what I drive going by on trailers headed for the junkyard, not much "old iron" is being saved due to the turnover in real estate and people always running around looking for an "eyesore" to whine about. That said I take the time to dismantle appliances and power tools and put the copper/aluminum and hardware aside, you never know when a switch, hinge or brace out out of one might come in handy. One reason to stay faithful to one particular model or brand is interchangeable parts. I live down the street and downstream from where the waterpowered Linn Tractor plant stood until a fire in 1982 (some annexes/outbuildings remain), parts/bits and pieces were scattered in fill and rip-rap they did around the village, plus they ran their own "boneyard" where they dismantled machines for used parts or chopped them into power units, burnt off the cabs, etc. that I tried to excevate as much as I could. And then there were sticky-fingered employees, whose basements, attics and garages I have tried getting the "clean-out" jobs for over the years as they died or moved away. About every post or piece of channel steel around this village originated from the Linn Co., the sheet steel liners out of dump boxes cover a lot of old cess pools. They also moved a lot of buildings around here with them. In fact the biggest obstacle I have had locally with collecting Linn history, is that until recently they had been so everyday (jaded) no one cared about it. After a few collectors pay outragous prices for them at auction, now everyone is hoping to find something around here that they can put on ebay. I am trying to complete a partial roster of original as well as current owners, to preserve what is left, and also so when I get sent a photo by someone like King-of- Obsolete, I can guess the model, vintage and location and maybe ownership, I tend to think of each machine as an individual, same as with steam locomotives, so if you have spotted a particular Linn, or heard about one years ago, or want to know what were used in your area, just shout and I'll tell you what I know. I also try and identify parts for people, and even the longshot of finding spare parts for those in need (no commission - I just want to save what is left from being scrapped). :Banghead
Attached pics (admit have size issues) what the Linn I have looked like new (1942), John Belfield in Melbourne, Australia has the only complete example today, and what mine looked like when it arrived, having been converted from a C5 to a C6 (front wheel drive, transfer case and hydraulically lowered rear wheeled axle that trailed, not driven) in ths late 1940s. Last image one culled from an adv. on ebay.
I put a blurb about Linn on wikipedia, basically he was a dog and pony show man who wanted to hit the off-railroad towns but found roads impassable, and began experimenting with gas and steam driven vehicles before getting involved with Alvin Lombard. Lombard was not really the "first" to build a crawler but the first commercial builder, distributor and servicing of them in the field. Linn found these crawlers were too big so began downsizing them for normal highway use, but being "sole sales agent" for Lombard at that point, Lombard claimed him as an employee and claimed propietary rights, this led to a lifelong feud and Linn went south, traveled through at least 13 states with his show but ended up here in Morris, NY where there was waterpower, investors, a desperate need for an induustry of some kind (when sheep and textiles were big before Reconstruction in the south, had been center of the Hops industry after that) and centrally located between NYC and Upstate manufacturing cities like Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, etc. where most of his components would come from. Plus there was clearly the same need for good roads (nearest rails about 8 miles away), a potential market for farm tractors and logging activity in the Adirondacks (north) and Catskills (south). A note about logging activity, except for clear cut acid wood operators during WW1, the companies leased or owned land managed for long term yields, they skidded logs out to the haul roads with single hitch horses, then loaded them onto sleighs at the banking decks,then assembled them at central areas into the 10 to 20 long sled trains Linns would haul down out to the rails (a Linn haul road was far cheaper than railroad building/equipping/operation) or rivers, roads were bridged over swamps and creeks with corduroy log roads, the road surfaces were iced with water at night, up to 3' depth, so the only enviromentally harmful aspect was when the logs bumped into riverbanks and bottoms going downstream. Now they have sold most of that land to the state, "forever wild" no matter what happens (the 1950 blowdown salvage was the last "big show" for all kinds of pre-WW2 and surplus army equipment in the Adirondacks, with much iron abandonned when done, since junked, burnt or buried by the state), and instead our timber products come from rainforests in other parts of the world being stripped bare. Ice roads are believed to have been developed in the Michigan woods c. 1880's, then of course after they began exploring the far north and hauling with outfits like King Of Obsolete has, they began a program of maintaining "ice roads" up there.
Everyday I see better stuff than what I drive going by on trailers headed for the junkyard, not much "old iron" is being saved due to the turnover in real estate and people always running around looking for an "eyesore" to whine about. That said I take the time to dismantle appliances and power tools and put the copper/aluminum and hardware aside, you never know when a switch, hinge or brace out out of one might come in handy. One reason to stay faithful to one particular model or brand is interchangeable parts. I live down the street and downstream from where the waterpowered Linn Tractor plant stood until a fire in 1982 (some annexes/outbuildings remain), parts/bits and pieces were scattered in fill and rip-rap they did around the village, plus they ran their own "boneyard" where they dismantled machines for used parts or chopped them into power units, burnt off the cabs, etc. that I tried to excevate as much as I could. And then there were sticky-fingered employees, whose basements, attics and garages I have tried getting the "clean-out" jobs for over the years as they died or moved away. About every post or piece of channel steel around this village originated from the Linn Co., the sheet steel liners out of dump boxes cover a lot of old cess pools. They also moved a lot of buildings around here with them. In fact the biggest obstacle I have had locally with collecting Linn history, is that until recently they had been so everyday (jaded) no one cared about it. After a few collectors pay outragous prices for them at auction, now everyone is hoping to find something around here that they can put on ebay. I am trying to complete a partial roster of original as well as current owners, to preserve what is left, and also so when I get sent a photo by someone like King-of- Obsolete, I can guess the model, vintage and location and maybe ownership, I tend to think of each machine as an individual, same as with steam locomotives, so if you have spotted a particular Linn, or heard about one years ago, or want to know what were used in your area, just shout and I'll tell you what I know. I also try and identify parts for people, and even the longshot of finding spare parts for those in need (no commission - I just want to save what is left from being scrapped). :Banghead
Attached pics (admit have size issues) what the Linn I have looked like new (1942), John Belfield in Melbourne, Australia has the only complete example today, and what mine looked like when it arrived, having been converted from a C5 to a C6 (front wheel drive, transfer case and hydraulically lowered rear wheeled axle that trailed, not driven) in ths late 1940s. Last image one culled from an adv. on ebay.
I put a blurb about Linn on wikipedia, basically he was a dog and pony show man who wanted to hit the off-railroad towns but found roads impassable, and began experimenting with gas and steam driven vehicles before getting involved with Alvin Lombard. Lombard was not really the "first" to build a crawler but the first commercial builder, distributor and servicing of them in the field. Linn found these crawlers were too big so began downsizing them for normal highway use, but being "sole sales agent" for Lombard at that point, Lombard claimed him as an employee and claimed propietary rights, this led to a lifelong feud and Linn went south, traveled through at least 13 states with his show but ended up here in Morris, NY where there was waterpower, investors, a desperate need for an induustry of some kind (when sheep and textiles were big before Reconstruction in the south, had been center of the Hops industry after that) and centrally located between NYC and Upstate manufacturing cities like Utica, Syracuse, Rochester, Buffalo, etc. where most of his components would come from. Plus there was clearly the same need for good roads (nearest rails about 8 miles away), a potential market for farm tractors and logging activity in the Adirondacks (north) and Catskills (south). A note about logging activity, except for clear cut acid wood operators during WW1, the companies leased or owned land managed for long term yields, they skidded logs out to the haul roads with single hitch horses, then loaded them onto sleighs at the banking decks,then assembled them at central areas into the 10 to 20 long sled trains Linns would haul down out to the rails (a Linn haul road was far cheaper than railroad building/equipping/operation) or rivers, roads were bridged over swamps and creeks with corduroy log roads, the road surfaces were iced with water at night, up to 3' depth, so the only enviromentally harmful aspect was when the logs bumped into riverbanks and bottoms going downstream. Now they have sold most of that land to the state, "forever wild" no matter what happens (the 1950 blowdown salvage was the last "big show" for all kinds of pre-WW2 and surplus army equipment in the Adirondacks, with much iron abandonned when done, since junked, burnt or buried by the state), and instead our timber products come from rainforests in other parts of the world being stripped bare. Ice roads are believed to have been developed in the Michigan woods c. 1880's, then of course after they began exploring the far north and hauling with outfits like King Of Obsolete has, they began a program of maintaining "ice roads" up there.
. How about those fancy outriggers!
