At the end of february I made my annual pilgrimage to Fort Mead, Florida to the Florida Flywheelers 2nd and last of the year convention. They have over 280 acres of land that includes private workshops, displays, old buildings, and just about every mechanical contrivance know to man. I call this trip a pilgrimage because I have only been there 1 time in 12 years that it hasn't been brutaly cold, and pouring rain; and this wasn't the lone year. It was truly nasty. For my friends that have not been here to the state, we do have cold weather, there is a lot of open land here, and our winter rains are just this side of sleet. Determined to get a few photos this year, many of the displayed artifacts were not viewable, including tractors of every make and model ever made just about. These guys take care of this stuff, in closed trailers, custom covers, the whole nine yards.
I walked the familiar areas, they do have hard dirt roads all over the place, not overly muddy but due to the traffic of golf carts, and vehicals of every form the roads had taked their toll.
Here are several pics; not even a minute sample of what is there over the weeklong event. A few are pieces that I have watched the restoration process thru the years, some pics I look for project ideas, a few distintive weathering samples, and some pretty cool machines and engines.
This is a boat engine that sat outside one of the private buildings for years, it used to be disassembled and looked more like a boat anchor than a boat engine; it's huge!
Here are a few smaller boat and tugboat engines, some are hooked up and operate, their are really interesting to see running on the super heavy duty display frames and foundations.
How about a loco engine.
Here's the largest engine in the park.
It's a Snow engine. This thing is fantastic to see run! I also watched this being restored and assembled here.
All this type of events have a working saw mill.
I'll continue in next post!
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