In 1917 a new and unique vehicle was developed for heavy hauling and
heavy construction work. Its designer, Holman Harry Linn, produced
a machine with a wide footprint, capable of traveling over different types
of terrain while carrying heavy payloads. The link track was the
cornerstone of Linn's design. No other manufacturer competed in the
niche market Linn created. For over thirty years, the Linn Manufacturing
Company produced these custom tractors for customers in all sorts of industries.
Some went to open pit mines, to logging, to construction sites, to dam
projects, and to rural town garages. In the 1930's and 40's these
machines were used to maintain the Panama Canal. The Grand Coulee
Dam in Washington State was built with the aid of LINN Tractors.
The fact that some of these machines still exist and run, testifies
to their creator's engineering genius. Despite many decades of neglect,
sitting in barns and sheds, in fields and junkyards, sometimes half buried
in soil, a dozen of Linn's tractors have come to reside under the care
of Charles Bilby in Richmondville, New York. Mr. Bilby's dream is
to restore these tractors for the benefit of future generations.
Charles' relationship with these behemoths from the past began many years
ago as a child.
Click For Photo Gallery
Of Linn Tractors
The Schenectady, New York, Daily Gazette printed an excellent
article about Charles and his collection of LINN Tractors. The following
text is a reprint of that article. All references to towns and counties
are in New York state unless otherwise noted.
Old Workhorse
Slow-moving Linn Tractor boasted rugged power
By ALAN GINSBURG
Gazette Reporter
Richmondville - Charlie Bilby primes with gasoline each of the six
cylinders of the 170 horsepower engine of the 1935 Linn Tractor, climbs
into the cab and presses the starter button.
The clank and clang of the engine echo throughout
the valley, jolting the tractor's nine tons of iron and steel.
"That's the greatest thrill, hearing that engine
turn over," Bilby says.
Grasping the iron steering wheel with both hands,
he engages the clutch, shifts into first gear and steps on the accelerator.
The Linn lurches forward as the clattering roller chain turns the track.
"You can feel the power when you step on the gas,"
says Bilby, noting that though the Linn's top speed is only about 8 mph,
its engine produces a powerful surge of energy.
Yet the Linn "half-track," as it was later dubbed
-- with its front wheels and rear bulldozer-like tracks -- wasn't made
for speed. It was built for power and strength, for hauling tons
rock, marble, road construction materials, and for plowing unpaved rural
roads.
In its heyday, this hybrid truck and track-driven
machine was the workhorse of the construction industry, used in building
dams, in copper mining, in marble quarries and logging. The Linn
Tractor was also used on farms -- with up to five plows attached -- to
plow fields.
Flexible track
The Linn Tractor, says Bilby, was a precursor of earth movers manufactured
by Caterpillar and other firms that improved on Linn's traction unit design,
with is flexible track system for easy travel over difficult terrain.
Designed by Holman Harry Linn, who formed the Linn
Manufacturing Co. in 1917 in Morris, Ostego County, the Linn Tractor was
custom-built machine with an average retail price of $20,00. In its
early years, the Linn was powered by gasoline. Later models were
available with diesel engines. Linns were equipped with four and
six cylinder Waukesha engines, six cylinder Cummins diesel engines and
later Hercules engines.
While earlier engines would accelerate the Linn
to about 8 mph, the Hercules increased it to 12 mph. Linn transmissions
provided four speeds both forward and backward.
"You could get any type of body you wanted," says
Bilby, "a dump body that could empty from the rear or the side, with metal-and-wooden
boxes that could carry 8 to 15 yards of material."
the Linns are about 25 feet long and 7 feet wide.
Many of the Linns were used in the logging industry, where sled-type skis
replaced the front wheels in winter and logs loaded in a train of trailers
were pulled by the tractor.
Standard colors were green and black, with some
available in yellow, red, black and orange.
The slogan for Linn Tractors was, "Carry a pay-load
using but one set of tracks."
In 1927, the Republic Motor Truck Corp., a Michigan-based
firm, purchased Linn Manufacturing and continued to operate it in Morris
as a subsidiary while retaining its name.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Linn Tractor was
used in construction of dams, such as the Grand Coulee Dam on the Columbia
River in Washington state, for maintenance work on the waterway in the
Panama Canal Zone and in many Tennessee Valley Authority projects.
Linns also were extensively used in the logging industry in the Adirondacks.
Lasting impression
Bilby, a maintenance employee at the State University
of New York College at Cobleskill, says his fascination with the Linn tractor
began when he was a youngster watching the machine plow snow along the
back roads of Schoharie County.
"I still remember seeing the Linn coming down the
road from a long way off, and even after it was out of sight, you could
hear the roar of the engine and the clatter of the track," he says.
His father was a "wing man" on a Linn, Huddled
against winter's cold winds in a small shed attached to the dump box and
outfitted with a kerosene heater, Bilby's father raised and lowered the
wing plows with control levers. The levers were later modified to
operate from the cab.
"When they were plowing with the wings out, it stretched
about 21 fee wide, the the average road was probably narrower between stone
walls," Bilby says.
Cleats were attached to the tracks to prevent sliding
on the snow- and ice-covered roads. It took two men two days to fasten
the cleats.
"It was quite a sight to see," says Bilby, who recalls
watching the Linn clear the high snowdrifts. After each attempt to
dislodge deep layers of hard-packed snow with the front-mounted V-plow,
the driver would back up and buck against the drift, back and forth until
a wide path opened.
Never forgetting those early images of the Linn
Tractor in action, Bilby, whose longtime hobby is restoring early gas-powered
engines, found his first Linn about 11 years ago, a 1924 machine abandoned
by a town highway department. He restored it and has taken the Linn
to exhibitions of vehicles and machinery of yesteryear.
Bilby has accumulated a dozen Linn Tractors -- built
between 1924 to 1946 -- most of them once used by town highway departments
in Schoharie and several other nearby counties. He found them in
town barns, garages, landfills, fields, in various stages of rust and corrosion.
He restored the engines on a few and replaced parts and adjusted the tracks
so they would operate.
"I talked with some of the old guys who remembered
the Linn plowing theirs towns and some knew where they ended up, and when
I found one, No matter how rusted or busted up it was, I'd offer to take
it off their hands."
Delicate job
One of the Linns, he says, was buried nearly
2 feet in the ground. "We had to dig it out and jack it up and put
blocks under it until we could free it. I just hate to see them end
up in the junkyard."
Recently, he restored a 1935 Linn for a town in
Sullivan County in exchange for two other Linns -- a 1933 gas-powered and
a 1946 diesel-powered Linn, with metal cab and body.
Restoring the 1935 Linn took two years and the help
of his nephew Rob Bilby, who restored the tractor's electrical system.
"The engine was a lot worse than I thought," says
Bilby. "The valves were rusted shut, pistons stuck so tight you couldn't
get them out."
After failing to free the pistons with solvent.
he dislodged them by using a 20 ton hydraulic jack that squeezed a plug
against the pistons to drive them through the cylinders. Though he
had to replace the piston rings and make new head gaskets, the bearings
simply needed a good cleaning.
Bilby ordered some engine parts from a man in Ohio
who maintains an inventory of parts used in Linn engines: others he fabricated
or found in the scrap yard. Bilby has the technical manuals, including
drawings and diagrams, for repairing the tractors.
Bilby also repaired the hydraulic system that operates
the plow, mounted new side lights, replaced the windshield and back window
of the cab, mounted new tires. He cleaned and adjusted the track
mechanisms and repainted the metal parts black.
He then replaced rotted wooden doors, roof slats
of the cab and dump body with white oak planks and painted them green,
the Linn's original color. He had a new decal printed for the side
of the cab, to match the original company logo.
Linn Manufacturing stopped making the tractors in
the early 1950s, but would accept used tractors as trade for highway equipment,
such as sanders and snow plows, Bilby said.
"The company would cut the engine from the rest
of the tractor, rebuild it and sell it for use at power plant," he said,
noting he has several of the engines, two that were used in sawmills, one
that operated a ski tow and another that operated a water pump that made
snow at a ski resort.
Passed by
"The Linn was just a good idea in its time," says Bilby, "They were outmoded
when country roads were black-topped and four-wheel-drive, rubber-tire
trucks came along that could plow and travel much faster."
Meredith McNeil, professor of agricultural engineering
at SUNY Cobleskill, who also has a special interest in Linns, agreed.
"Time finally outran the Linn company. They
built a machine that served the logging, construction industry and highway
industry at a time when speed wasn't important. The Linn was slow
but rugged beyond belief. But in the late 1940s and early 1950s,
America really began to move technologically. So, speed-wise, the
Linn Tractor was outdated.
What made the Linn last, says McNeil, was the track
system. "It had what you would call a fairly large footprint -- the
amount of area that contacted the ground, which meant it could carry some
pretty big loads."
Bilby says he's still looking for Linns to add to
his collection and continues to comb the countryside for rusting machinery
in former town landfills, barns and junkyards. He also checks out
reported sightings of Linn Tractors by folks who have seen his restored
1924 Linn Tractor at a gas-up or antique car exhibit.
Ernie Benson of Worcester recalls what it was like
seeing a Linn plowing the roadway from Dorloo to Hyndsville in Schoharie
County in the winter of 1945, when he was 7.
Stopping by to admire Bilby's restoration of the
1935 Linn Tractor and hearing the start, brought back memories for Benson
of the thrill of watching the tractor plow through the snow.
"It was awesome," says Benson, "It was an awful
winter that year, lots of snow. the Linn just came down that dirt road
loaded with rock to give it ballast, and it just kept pushing against the
snow, back and forth until the road was cleared. For a young boy,
it was quite a sight to see, something you'd never forget."