Not that this has much to do with freight cars (although tractors were carried on flat cars) the year diesel engines appeared on the following farm tractors was: Caterpillar 1931; International Harvester 1934; Cletrac mid 30's; Allis Chalmers 1937; John Deere 1949; J I Case 1953.

Lee Thwaits

Semi off-topic, but if you are interested in old farm equipment,
tractors, trucks, engines & generators, etc. check out the 55 acre
Antique Gas & Steam Engine Museum in Vista, California, north of San
Diego.

They have thousands of pieces of equipment plus a large blacksmith
shop, the steam power plant from a Santa Ana, CA sugar refinery,
several steam tractors, a 3-cylinder 14" x 17" FM engine...all
operating. At least on the festival days I've been there. Plus a
large N scale model railroad. LOTS of stuff to see, hear, & smell.
Very pre-OSHA. Plus people who can answer questions on old equipment.

Few people in SoCal even know the museum is here. Well worth a visit.

http://www.agsem.com/about.html

Rob Simpson



--- In STMFC@..., "Mark Plank" <tandocrr@...> wrote:

Ed,

To answer one question:

Did farm equipment run on gasoline?

Yes. Not sure when diesel engines became popular in tractors (I'm

sure someone tried it shortly after van/von Diesel built his first
engine [in the 1880s? I'm away from research information now]), but
our first diesel was a Ford 4000 in 1964. Dad had a 1948 Farmall C
and a 1952 860 Ford that ran on gas, an earlier tractor was a Ford 9N
that used gas. Two Allis-Chalmers C's I used when helping a neighbor
while growing up were new in 1930 and used gas - he is still farming
with them! In checking out the local parades, most of the "antique"
tractors seem to be gas. Not a scientific answer, but in my limited
experience, gas prevailed until the past 20 or so years. Our
combines also ran on gas both at home and when I was on wheat harvest
in 1981.

Mark Plank