- All right, I'm backing up, guy.

- [Man] You could do back up now.

(steam hissing) - It's a 1914 Case Steam Engine made in Racine, Wisconsin.

I bought it at an auction in Sparta, Wisconsin, in 2001.

The steam engines were the vehicles that drove the industrial revolution, broke the prairies and started modern agriculture, the way we know it.

So it really is a piece of the past that still is alive.

This one runs on wood.

Anything that'll burn.

Actually a lot of them used to use coal.

Out on the prairies where they didn't have wood, they actually had special models that would burn straw.

I burn wood to heat the water to make the steam.

Here's the fire going.

Okay, so we saw the fire was back here.

The hot gases go through this tube, the boiler tube here.

There's 42 two-inch boiler tubes in there.

So the hot gases will go from that fire, through those two-inch tubes and then up the smoke stack.

This is called the water leg.

So it tells me how much water is in the boiler at all times.

So you can see, I got this right here.

The water makes steam.

Steam rises to this dome in the back.

Then it goes through, if you've ever seen the guy with the little balls up there is a fly-ball governor.

And then it comes down.

So in this cylinder there's a 10-inch piston connected to the rod here.

And so the piston goes to here.

The valve opens up.

Steam expands 1600 to 1 at boiling temperature.

It pushes the piston this way.

This valve opens up and pushes it back so I have power on both ends of my stroke.

And then the steam gets exhausted.

It comes down and goes up the smokestack and helps draw that hot gases through the boiler tubes when you're working hard.

So if you hear the, see the puffing, like on an old steam locomotive, that's when the exhaust is going through and going up the smoke stack.

To run a steam engine is not that difficult, but to run it good it takes some finesse.

- [Man] So before (indistinct).