SURROUNDED BY Steam
It’s not just anybody who has a steam engine in every room of the house. “I even have one in the bathroom,” says 87-year-old Jack Strand of Plano, Texas. “My wife lets me do that – two of the engines are hers, in fact – and she has her hobbies too.”
Jack’s interest in steam engines probably began in his childhood. He grew up on a Minnesota farm and helped with the threshing there until the family moved when he was about 9. “After we left, two ladies lived on the farm, and I cultivated and plowed for them,” he says, “but after that I didn’t spend a lot of time on the farm.”
Instead, he worked as a bricklayer, which inadvertently launched a collection. “I bought a cement mixer and used a 1-1/2hp International Harvester Model LA engine on it,” he says. “I fell in love with that engine. That’s what got me started. My work became my hobby, and I started buying gasoline engines.”
Jack also started collecting steam engines, including a road roller and a pair of Atlas steam engines, and
