Steam tractor
vehicle powered by a steam engine which is used for pulling
A steam tractor is a tractor powered by a steam engine which is used for pulling.
In North America, the term steam tractor usually refers to a type of agricultural tractor powered by a steam engine, used extensively in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
In Great Britain, the term steam tractor is more usually applied to the smallest models of traction engine – typically those weighing seven tons or less – used for hauling small loads on public roads. Although known as light steam tractors, these engines are generally just smaller versions of the "road locomotive".
This article concentrates on the steam-powered agricultural vehicles intended for the direct-pulling of plows and other implements (as opposed to cable-hauling).
Development
Owing to differences in soil conditions, the development of steam-powered agricultural machines differed considerably on either side of the Atlantic.
Great Britain
In Great Britain, a number of traction engine builders attempted to produce a design of agricultural engine that could pull a plow directly, in place of a team of horses. However, the heavier and wetter soils found in Britain meant that these designs were not successful, being less economical to use than the teams of horses they were intended to replace. These engines were also known as "steam tractors". Instead, farmers resorted to cable-hauled plowing using plowing engines.
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This entry incorporates text from “Steam tractor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.