An unexpected pleasure at RailFair 2005 was the Best steam tractor from Oakland museum. This is an amazing beast, standing nearly 18 feet high with a massive wood-fired vertical boiler and huge main driving wheels. I've never seen anything like it, and its quite a sight and sound when its in motion. It was built around 1905 in San Leandro, California.
Here are some pictures and a couple of movies:
The Best in full motion. The driver gives you the proper sense of the scale of this thing.
Here it comes round the padock. It is indeed a three-wheeled beast, with chain steering from the cab.
The fireman stands on a platform behind the behemoth, hand firing with logs.
Here's a view of the underslung engine. The cylinders are behind the green wooden side-planking and are inclined upwards. They drive the massive rear wheels through a complex series of gears to provide power and a very slow top speed.
A view looking up at the vertical boiler. The brass whistel is prominent amongst the various pipes and valves that control steam production.
A front view of the Best. Again the people in the background give a sense of scale. The large red tank is not the boiler: it carries the water supply.
A final view of the Best across the padock hauling passengers in an improvised haywain.
And here is a fairly large (4.9MB) movie of the Best setting off. You can hear the frantic chuffing of the engine as it powers the gears and achieves slightly better than glacial forward velocity.