Pictures anyone??? Grab a coffee or a beer and enjoy the show.

Trader Feedback · May 22

Click on the pictures to get full size.

Yesterday was a nice sunny late spring day here in Southern Ontario. Wife and I went looking at "Old Stuff" on the Haldimand Antique Tour. This is one of several tours put on in my area each spring. This one is the only one to fit our schedule so......here's the story.

There are six stops on this tour and you can do them in any order that suits you and on any of the three days of the holiday weekend. Sunday was it for us.

First stop was at the collection of Jim & Guy Heaslip at Nelles Corners. This father and son team specialize in Oliver/Hart Parr tractors and equipment but they have an amazing collection of most anything else from the early 20th century on. Pics below show a very small selection from all the different things they have.

Oliver/Hart Parr

Horse harness decorative brasses.

Trivets

Wood and coal stove doors and trim.

Steam engine smoke box doors.

Signs..tiny selection of the hundreds of signs they have.

Other products made by tractor makers

These pics represent only a tiny fraction of the thousands of pieces in the Heaslip collection.

The next stop for us was at the Canadian Drill Rig Museum at Rainhan Centre. They have a restored gas drilling rig and many other ancillary pieces such as bit sharpeners; gas meters and test equipment; early gas stoves and lighting etc.; portable rigs and other things related to the natural gas industry in the late 19th and early 20th century. There were and still are many natural gas wells on the north shore and in the lakebed of Lake Erie.

This drill rig was built in 1896 and restored for it's 100th birthday in 1996. The 26 year old restoration job is starting to look shabby but all the volunteers who look after the rig and the rest of the artifacts are getting older so further work won't likely happen. Getting younger people interested in this type of activity is nearly impossible. Most young people now think their gas comes in a pipeline from out west and don't realize there was and is an oil and gas industry here in Southern Ontario.

Our third stop was at the Walpole Antique Farm Equipment Association grounds in Jarvis Ontario. This group has a very active membership and puts on one of the largest shows in my area on the August long weekend. They have grown steadily over the last 20 years; buying their own grounds; putting up many buildings; collecting tractors and farm equipment; collecting some railroad stuff and building a couple of hundred feet of track and the crowning achievement of moving and restoring the Jarvis CN rail station to their grounds.

A scale for the pulling tractors.

A couple of very rare Case shop mules used in factories to move stuff and at airports to move planes.

And some of the Association owned tractors etc. Of course when they have the big show in August ther are many hundreds more things on display by their owners.

The fourth stop was around the corner in Jarvis at the private collection of Dave Doughty. His collection is predominately IHC as he and his family have a long connection with Doughty & Williamson farm equipment dealership selling IHC and many shortline equipment selections. Dave's collection includes tractors, trucks, garden tractors, irrigation pumps, shop mule and homemade toys built around IHC stationary engines. He also has a REO firetruck retired from the Jarvis fire department.

When we got to Dave's it wasn't very busy so I had a chance for a nice long chat. I usually only see him on this tour and at the WAFMA show.

The fifth stop was at the Sitter Massey Memories Museum in Hagersville. The owner of this collection runs an accounting firm but his parents were Massey dealers in the 40's 50's and 60's. He has some rare and interesting stuff dating back to the early 20th century up to the mid century. The Massey family from Toronto were involved with the partnership of Sawyer Massey to build road building machinery and with Massey Harris to build farm equipment. When Henry Ford and Harry Ferguson fell out Ferguson became involved with Massey Harris to become Massey Harris Ferguson and later just Massey Ferguson. Today along with Mahindra, John Deere and Case IH they are among the top selling equipment makers in the world.

Over the years Massey made wagons, harvesting equipment, tractors, tillage equipment, stationary engines, cream seperators , bicycles and many other products for the agriculture industry.

The sixth and last stop was at Lasera Farms on Concession 13 of Walpole Twsp. just outside of Hagersville.

They had 2 of their Cockshutt Model 20 tractors on display along with some equipment and two older seed drills. Also a Ford and AC tractor from friends on display.