Equipment, Toys Galore Highlight Northern IL Sandwich Engine Show

Tue November 12, 2002
Cindy Ladage

During the summer, crowds headed to the Sandwich Early Day Engine Show. While mostly a tractor show, industrial machinery also was on display along with engines and toys. The show drew a large crowd to this Northern Illinois town known for the Sandwich engines it once produced.

One rather unusual piece of equipment on display was Paul Furar’s 1930 Toro Junior 13-30 truck. This truck was a lone ranger with no other trucks or tractors on display quite like it. Furar’s father, Frank, bought the truck in Amboy, IL, in June 1978. The truck had light duty. “He drove it around in parades until 1983,” Furar said.

During its working days, the truck had seen harder labor, as it had been used on a golf course as a truck of all trades. It hauled and mowed as well as doing other odd jobs. Furar explained, “It was used to mow a golf course. It had a gang mower beneath it and they used the back to fill with sand.”

Small but mighty, the Toro Junior industrial truck doesn’t look very big, but Furar said the bed of the truck, “will hold a ton of sand.”

The truck is pre-World War II. Built in 1930 at the onset of the Great Depression, the truck was a Ford Model A front end and a Clark rear end. Furar said the serial number for the Toro Junior 13-30 model started at 101 and went up to 540. The truck was given a rather limited production. “There were 447 models made from 1930 to 1934. They made about 100 a year,” he noted.

Although Furar knows his model Toro Junior was made in 1930, he can’t find the serial number. Getting the truck in working order though wasn’t too hard as he just replaced the battery and had to update the wiring.

While most of the truck is original, Furar said a few things that were modified included the seat and the Pennzoil stickers that adorn the sides of the truck.

The Toro Junior was just one of many in Frank Furar’s collection. He collects old cars as well.

Other industrial equipment also was on hand at the Sandwich Show including a 1957 John Deere 420 crawler with a Henry loader. Maynard Myer owned the Deere tractor.

Industrial toys made up a good part of the show as well. Jim Wheeler, of Wheeler Construction Models, had several toys on display that would interest any construction toy buff. Wheeler, based out of Marseilles, IL, not only sell readymade toys, but offers custom models as well.

Other interesting sights at the Sandwich Show were Gary Ahlgren’s steam engine models. Ahlgren, a machinist, builds steam engines as a hobby. After tackling a kit steam model, he crafted a 1/6-scale model Case traction engine that runs. He noted that it took him approximately three years to build this unit. Once it was completed, his next project was to build a 1/3-scale model Case 65. This took approximately 700 hours to build, he said. It weighs 2,000 lbs. (907 kg), could pull people in a wagon and also will run a saw.

Not content to stop there, Ahlgren is now building a 1/2-scale Minneapolis 28. “This will be a perfect replica once completed. I started on it last fall and hope to have it completed by show season 2004,” he said.

This story also appears on Construction Equipment Guide.