July 29 trip to Power Land in Brooks for the Great Oregon Steam-Up. Story below by Jim Sweet.

This 2/3 size Freightliner was built by
company founder and President Ken Self.

Our event planner is where? What? Dave went to Reno???!!! Thankfully, John Sailors was at the meeting place to greet members, hand out sign in sheets and explicit driving directions for the back-roads route to our destination, the Great Oregon Steam-Up in Brooks, Oregon. Unfortunately, John was unable to make the drive with us. Jim Sweet was “volunteered” to be the lead car in our caravan.

On this beautiful summer day, nine members from the club in four ’57 T-Birds and one Retro-Bird ventured down a series of back roads to the Great Oregon Steam-Up in Brooks, Oregon. Our caravan included a couple of cars and members from The Early Ford V8 Club. Fortunately, Jim brought along a friend, Steve, who acted as the navigator for this route. It was a very nice drive with only one minor issue. There was a very short area that had been recently chip-sealed. By time of our drive most of any loose gravel was packed in or gone. Even so, we took it very slow over this brief section of road.

Arriving only about five minutes before the 9:00am deadline, and behind a long line of other exhibitors checking in, our group was just flagged in without having to go through the sign-in process. Once we were parked in the exhibit area, we all pretty much did our own thing for the day, wandering the vast grounds and taking in all of the exhibits and museums. Pretty much any kind of land
based power equipment one can imagine was on display: From ancient steam-powered farm equipment, to a huge 80-horsepower Fairbanks-Morse stationary engine weighing 19,000 lbs, to a wide variety of cars, trucks, motorcycles, etc.

Jim Sweet