Our March 2026 Newsletter
Vermont Gas & Steam Engine Assoc. Our 52nd Year!!
March 2026
Happy Spring!! Well, almost. The trees are tapped, the sap has run, been gathered, and boiled in, though we’ve not quite made syrup yet. There is nothing like covering up the unpleasantness of mud season with the sweet process of sugaring. By the time we get done, it will be time to start working up the garden!
I have made contact with the Cars of Yesterday club, and they are delighted to be in contact with us once more. We are invited to their show, unfortunately it is on our Quechee weekend. They are interested in possibly attending Brownington informally (not an actual show for them), and we will be staying in touch. I’m thinking a few of us could and should try to reciprocate if they ask us to go to another one of their shows.
DUES AND FINANCES; The new year of course brings in a new dues cycle! Dues are still $20 per family membership, and are payable anytime, either at a show or by mail. If you forgot to pay your 2025 dues, please do. You MUST be paid up in order to vote in any meeting or exhibit at any of our shows. We are all very grateful for all of your contributions, and the dues are the life blood of our organization. The checkbook is in good standing and all debts are paid including the insurance.
MEMBERSHIP: As of 09 March, we have 24 paid up regular members We have 6 life members and 6 honorary members, 4 of which are our show site contacts. We don’t like to hound people to pay their dues, but we mention it each newsletter so that you will be reminded. Regardless, we are thankful for all who do support and stay interested, which is what keeps our little club hitting, and missing, , and functioning pretty well!!
If you know of anyone that has an engine that would be interested in joining us, please put them in contact with me so that I can get them signed up. We are all recruiters after all! You do not have to have an engine actually, any old tractors, doodlebugs, Model T’s and A’s, or other old cars of similar vintage, and old tool displays are all welcomed and encouraged! You can join us even if you have none of the above, we have members who buy and sell engines on a regular basis, and sometimes some sweet deals can be made for a new member wanting to get started.
COMMUNICATIONS:
Newsletters generally are published every other month, Jan, Mar, May, July, Sept, and Nov. Should you find that you are not getting the newsletter, during these times, please contact me, and I will put things right.
NEW!! We have a new website which is now live!! Kristin Williams of Upper Valley Web Design has been diligent (and I might add, very patient) getting us going on this, and though we are still tweaking it a bit, we are on the web!! Our website domain name is VGSEA.com!
We had a board meeting on 22 February which was well attended and productive. The highlights are as follows:
There will be a work day to install plates under Leffel trailer to support anchor bolts for boiler, date TBD. John to get measurements, quantities required for the plates (Steve offered steel from his scrap pile for this purpose), and he will set a date for a work day once plates are on hand; Minor clarification was made to the club’s mission statement regarding spending to fund club expenses; It was voted to adopt a 2” round button featuring a McVicker Automatic engine, with club name, year, and engine name, and one button for entire season; It was voted to change the board meeting in June to 10AM on Sunday, 21 June, to allow for earlier pot luck supper on Saturday afternoon, 20 June; It was voted to credit new members who join after 1 Sept of any given year, through the following year if they come with no exhibit; Kristin Williams of Upper Valley Web design attended meeting, and talked us through the new website, and she did a GREAT job with it; The secretary was directed to check into insurance options as premium increased over 60%, and also to look into price and availability of new hats for the club with the logo on them.
Regarding insurance, the minimum premiums have been increased ‘industry’ wide. It was decided by the board by proxy to keep what we have.
SHOW DATES FOR 2026
Brownington: 20-21 June; Rough camping allowed and encouraged on site, and we are planning a pot luck and music event Saturday evening. The board meeting (I expect it will be a short one) will be on Sunday morning at 10AM so as to get the potluck going earlier for those that wish to be home before dark. We are hoping for some of the “Cars of Yesteryear” to come to our show.
Quechee Gorge: 1-2 Aug; Rough camping allowed on site, and there is a well-attended flea market that operates on Sunday throughout the day. Our annual members meeting will be held at 4PM on Saturday afternoon.
St Johnsbury Fall Festival show: 26 Sept*: Part of a town wide celebration, and very well attended by public, no camping or large campers larger than a pickup truck (with trailer) due to space limitation, with one exception. The show area is paved.
Marshfield Fall Festival show; 27 Sept*: Officially there is no camping allowed on the site, but those with exhibits are allowed to “sleep with your engines”! this show is held in Marshfield’s ball field from 10AM to 4PM, and in the last two years has been hugely attended by the public. There are food concessions on site throughout the day, and there generally is a band along with many other activities throughout the weekend. There will be a board meeting at 10AM, just before the show starts.
*The St Johnsbury and Marshfield show dates are officially unconfirmed, but as our show contacts from both St J and Marshfield told me, the hosting events have always been held at this time, so we went with it!); All have been registered in the Farm Collector directory for 2026. Should there be a change in dates, we will make every effort to let everyone know as early as possible.
OTHER EVENTS OF INTEREST AND WORTH ATTENDING:
Alton Whipple Show; This show will be held at 3836 Hinman Settler Road, Newport Vt on 13 June, a one-day show. He has offered to anyone who brings an exhibit to leave their exhibits at his place, and then pick them up before Brownington which is the very next weekend, and just a few miles down the road. There will be a yard sale, engines to buy or trade, and ‘tis said that there are Amish made doughnuts and coffee available!
Dublin Gas Engine Meet; This wonderful show takes place at Cricket Hill Farm, 1716 Main St, (Rt 101), Dublin NH, 03444. If you have never been, it is unlike any other, and is a must see. Dates are 11-13 September.
North Haverhill Fair; This fair is at the fairgrounds at 1299 Dartmouth College Highway, North Haverhill NH, from 22 July to 26 July. For those who like fairs, this is a good one. They welcome and greatly encourage antique engines and equipment, and any of our folks that come will be co-located with the Two Cylinder club, which features mostly two-cylinder John Deeres, but also engines like ours, as well as old tractors of all description. There is also an ag-museum that you don’t want to miss!
The Presby Tractor show which was a really nice one is not being held again this year.
PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENTS; For those that like local history and sugaring the old-fashioned way, Hale Mattoon has a new book out, which compliments his previous books about sap spouts very nicely. It is also about sap spouts, along with syrup containers, labels and more! It is a must read!
Ted Faris of Barnet not only runs a welding shop, but does babbiting!! This is a great resource to have in our club! If you have babbiting needs, stop and see him, or give him a call!
Farm collector has a compilation of all of their issues of all of their magazines from the beginning on a thumb drive! I bought one, and is delightfully interesting! While scanning through it, I found that VGSEA was featured in one of their articles several years ago!
For Sale: Dave Morrison of Waterford has a pair of wooden oxcart wheels for sale. They are 56” high, and are truly impressive. Call Dave at 802 748 8793. I do believe the price will be right, but you’ll have to talk to him about that! His father used to use them to move his dragsaw from place to place back before there were chainsaws.
Exhibit information cards: We have re-stocked our supply of blank exhibit info cards which will be passed out to all exhibitors at all of the shows. These are to be filled out with a description of the exhibit, and posted at the exhibit. You may have seen some of these on some of our older exhibits. This helps educate the public on what you are exhibiting, and may reduce the number of questions that you are likely asked repeatedly at each show. After all, educating the public is what we are all about! There may be some nice wooden frames for sale for these, however that is still in the planning stage.
We are still looking for engine stories to publish. These seem to go over well according to the feedback I’ve received on them. I have another story on an engine that I have, and I am nearing the end of my inventory! Hopefully some more of you will come forth with some of your stories! They don’t have to be just on engines. Any piece of old equipment that you have that has a story is worth recording!
A story of another old engine. You may recall a few newsletters ago, when I told the story of my McVicker Automatic engine, and the old dragsaw that my father used to use to saw his wood way back when. There was more to that story, as I shall relate below.
One year, Mark and I decided to take the old drag saw to the Vermont Gas & Steam engine show that used to be held at the Lyndonville Vt fairgrounds in the fall of the year, hauling the whole business on my trailer behind my 1964 Chevy platform dump truck. It was an ambitious project, of course we were quite a bit younger then, and probably didn’t think too much about what we were getting into when we decided to do it. I had a wood pile that needed working up, and I had a nice pile of fairly good-sized maple logs, all of them about 12 feet long. I used my tractor and forks to load about a dozen or more of these into the dump truck, and then pushed the dragsaw onto the trailer, using rollers underneath to make the job a bit easier. We didn’t take the McVicker as it was wicked heavy, cumbersome (and sometimes quirky), so we ran the saw with Mark’s Galloway instead. It was half the horsepower, and probably a quarter of the weight, and small enough so that we could load it up in the front of the trailer with the saw rig behind it. We didn’t give a whole lot of thought at the time how we would load the whole business up AFTER the show with no tractor, but, as I said we were younger and a bit more foolish I suppose. Anyhow, once we got everything unloaded, and rolled into position, with the load of logs dumped on the ground beside the saw, we found that the operation worked very well, and we sawed the whole truckload of wood without any trouble at all. It went so well, and we had so much fun doing it, we had to pace ourselves so that we wouldn’t run out of logs in an hour or so! Once set up, the machine could saw wood somewhat faster than a chainsaw, and with very little effort. The logs were rolled onto the drag saw one at a time using cant-dogs and ramps, and then with the pull of a lever, advanced sixteen inches out beyond the saw. Another lever clamped the log down, another engaged the clutch which started the crankshaft and the saw attached to it moving back and forth, yet another lever dropped the saw onto the log, and very quickly the chunk was off, the saw lifted, the clutch disengaged, and the log advanced another 16” and the whole process was repeated until the log was gone. Then we would roll on another and start the process again. Soon we had a nice pile of wood chunks ready for splitting! This of course was what we had wanted all along, however, we hadn’t thought too much about how we would load the chunks back onto the truck! They were way too heavy to lift into the truck whole, but fortunately we had thought to bring a couple of sledge hammers and some wedges with us, and ended up splitting it all by hand, and I might add, a lot more of it needed splitting than we had anticipated, and then loading it up and piling it in. There was a good crowd that day and they all gathered around to see this bit of yesteryear. We were not strangers to splitting wood by hand, as we had always done it that way, so it wasn’t as big a deal as it seems, though I remember asking Mark why we brought so much! Anyhow, as we were working away, along came this gentleman who had been watching us for a while, and when we stopped to take a break, he said to me, “I have something that would go well with the drag saw that you ought to have”. My ears perked up of course, and the jist of it was, he had this upright cast iron wood splitter and engine that he said he “was getting too old to run”, and that we ought to have it along with a 3hp Jumbo engine that he had acquired somewhere along the way, to go with the drag saw. We talked about if for a while, and though he wasn’t quite ready to get rid of it yet, he wanted to make sure that I was able to get it if I wanted it. So, we talked some more, agreed upon a price, and I told him that I would pay him as soon as I could, and he could keep it for as many years as he wanted to. We shook hands, I went to see him as soon as I could to pay him, and about 7 or 8 years later, he called me and said I’d better come and get it. So, Mark and I went to his home in Walden Vt to get it, with a raggedy old ski doo trailer that I had. After looking at the underneath of the trailer after it was all loaded on, it is indeed a wonder that we ever made it home with it! Eventually, I found a nice trailer to mount it on, and it’s been my primary wood processer ever since. In addition, it has made it to quite a few shows.
The gentleman I’m talking about was Elwin ‘Brownie ‘Brown of Walden, who was a much sought after millwright until his retirement. He had worked for a successful businessman named Harold Geneene and had actually had a lot to do with building and setting up of Mr. Geneene’s sawmill, which became the HG Woods mill in Bath NH. Mr. Geneene had owned large wood lots in western Maine, complete with the logging camps of old along with at least one steam powered sawmill, and Brownie was instrumental in the setting up and operation of this mill. When Brownie finally retired, he went back to Maine on a fishing trip one time, and took a side trip to try to find the remains of the sawmill that he had worked on so many years before. He did find it, but there was little left except a huge pile of decayed sawdust, and some odds and ends of rusted metal laying around. He was poking around and noticed what looked like a cast iron gear sticking out of the sawdust, and after digging around for a while, there lay the splitter. He covered it back up, and upon his return, he asked Mr. Geneene if he could retrieve it, and with that permission, returned, and somehow toted the thing out of the woods,(it weighs close to 1000 lbs.) brought it home, got it loosened up and in working condition, coupled it up with the 3hp Jumbo, (whose previous history I don’t know and neither did he) and for many years split his own wood with it. The Jumbo was one of several lines of engines built by the Nelson Brothers company, and unfortunately after the company went bankrupt in 1940, most of the records were purposely burned, so there is little known about how old the engine is, or much else about it for that matter. What did matter is that the engine ran great, and powered the wood splitter quite nicely. I used the splitter for many years just as it was with little or no trouble. Eventually, I changed the lubrication of the top shaft (the one that gets the hardest pounding), from oil lubrication to grease, with a grease cup on either side. This seems to work much nicer than the oil, also there is no place for water or dirt to get in anymore. As for the engine, about a year or so ago, I had to remove the pushrod for the exhaust valve and magneto, and tighten up the cam follower on the end of it, so that it would run true. Then after a bit of adjustment, I found that this engine is the best one of all of my collection in regards to starting. One pull over, and away she goes! I have split my wood with this machine for close to twenty years, and hope to use it for as many more as I need or am able. It is truly a wonderful old machine.
Brownie and his wife Maggie were musicians as well, which is another connection we had. We used to stay up half the night after the engine shows next to the little wood stove that I always bring, and we would play music until we couldn’t play anymore. Brownie and Maggie are both gone now, but their memories live on in the local music scene, with old engine folks, and all who knew them.
And just one more for fun! It’s called “If I Were A Fly”
It’s not the time of year for many flies to be around, but now and then, one will come and pester you by landing on your ear or nose at night when you are almost asleep, which happened to me one cold night in February. I tried really hard to catch him, but he was smarter than I was, and wide awake too, which I was not! I thought it would be good to think of the fly’s perspective just once!
If I were a fly, I’d fly, says I. I’d not have to walk, wear suspenders, or drive.
No gasoline to purchase, nor eggs to fry. No schedules to follow, nor clothes to dry.
I’d eat for free, and I’d travel the sky. On Sunday’s I’d relax in the sun at the church on the steeple.
Then when service time comes, I’d go down and bother the people. I’d lick the frosting on the minister’s cake.
From the choir ladies’ cookies, a big bite I’d take. With delight I’d land on the organist’s nose.
And tickle her ankle, out of reach, through her hose. I’d go home with someone in their comfortable car.
It’s easy that way, as I don’t like to fly far. Then I’d sneak into a house, the first that I’d come to.
And drop a few spots on their shiny clean window. I suppose you will wonder, why so much mischief do I?
Because, my friends, I’m a carefree fly!
-Paul R Amey, Secretary-