Engine Manuals

[sbeates]

Dear All,
Drake Well Museum staff are writing Operations, Maintenance, and Interpretive manuals for the 17 gas engines and one steam engine in the collection here. I guess housing thousands of feet of manuscript material is not enough. We have no original parts lists nor catalogs for the following engines: Oil City Boiler Works; Jacobson (Jacobson Machine & Mfg. Co., Warren, PA); Klein (probably none produced but thought I'd ask - National Transit Pump & Machine Co., Oil City, PA); Luther Eclipse (formerly made by the Myrick Machine Shop, Olean, NY); Araco (American Railway Appliance Co., Oil City, PA); Evans (Evans Mfg. Co., Butler, PA).
Thank you!
Sue

[Andrew Mackey]

Try contacting Rough and Tumble Museum in Kinzers PA. They have a Klein there, as well as some of the other engines you mentioned. Perhaps they might have some paperwork on them.
Andrew

[PaulGray]

Sue- The problem is that there are simply no manuals/parts listings to be had for some of these obscure engines. On one occasion I have seen a manual for a 12 HP ARACO and Bovairds on ebay but since they are so scarce, they get out of my price range pretty quickly. I believe a lot of these little vertical engines were sold to lease holders/ companies who bought the engines in lots. They generally did not go to the general public from what I have seen. OTOH, they may have simply never produced a manual- the ARACO shops were a small concern only in business for ~10 years; probably only made 2000-2500 engines tops??. I have searched for several years for anything on ARACO but except for the ebay parts catalog and references in Oil City directories, nada. Same for Oil Well supply vertical. All I have on Myrick are copies of the surviving company records purchased from a fellow collector- some scant parts listings + photos; I'd have to get permission from him to send you copies. On Luther, I tracked down the son of the owner of the company and he had no info on the engines- much/all of it was simply thrown out. One of the biggest shames to the hobby is when a piece of literature like you are looking for comes up and goes to a private collector where it sits in a safe or drawer. I do not care to be a steward of old ephemera, but I do like to have "working copies" of literature to use in the restoration and to maybe enlarge for a display of the engine. I do not believe that having copies out there detracts from the value of the original paper, but maybe I am wrong. Through your museum, I was able to get copies of National Transit VT-13 and Lil'Hummer manuals- not a lot of stuff, but at least something. What literature I have, I share freely.