I saw a number of these at Powerland Heritage Park in Brooks, OR a few years back... This park is a few miles North of Salem, just off I-5. They have a yearly midsummer "Steam-Up" with all sorts of farmland equipment on display, including these big ol' steamrollers.
Interesting to watch these guys rumble along... VERY slow, and on the gravel-covered driveways, the old-fashioned "steering" mechanism pretty much works on a "when-I-feel-like it" basis. Pull HARD on the chain for the direction you want it to go... And HOPE it actually turns...
I still use the term "steamroller" today, although technically steam has nothing to do with it. I'm not even sure what the correct term is for the current version of this machine.
I saw one of these steam babies working when I was in Germany 1950. It was awesome!! An incident occurred which sticks in my memory of a young boy running in front of the steam roller and the operator yelling at him in German to stay away. We were Americans with our fathers who were stationed in Germany after the war and re-construction was everywhere. I don't know if the boy understood German but he did keep away after the warning!
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Interesting to watch these guys rumble along... VERY slow, and on the gravel-covered driveways, the old-fashioned "steering" mechanism pretty much works on a "when-I-feel-like it" basis. Pull HARD on the chain for the direction you want it to go... And HOPE it actually turns...
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