TTM site

Texas Transportation Museum

11731 Wetmore Road, San Antonio, TX 78247
(210)490-3554

TTM's Tractors, Trucks, Big Engines and Small Engines

Click on images to enlarge

The museum has quite a collection of these antique motors and engines. 2002 Vice-Chairman, Ben Bennett, took them on as his personal project a few years ago. Up until then, many had lain dormant for decades. With his skill and dedication, many of them run and look better than they did new.

Most of the motors are on mobile stands. This not only makes them more mobile at the museum. It also makes it easier for Ben to load them on a trailer when he takes them out to the variety of agricultural shows in the vicinity. And further a field, too. There is a big show in Temple every year and Ben had been known to load 'em up and ship 'em out on more than one occasion. That's if there is room on the trailer beside his huge grist mill, that is!

Small engines are of the many enthusiasms of current board Vice-Chairman, Ben Bennett. To find out more about these small engines, please click on the link below.

Antique Engines – www.angelfire.com/tx3/gasengines/

This is Ben's own site, and a remarkably good one it is too!

Thanks to Barry Hickson, a visitor to this site from Australia - "G'day, mate!" - we now have a lot more information about what we had been obliged to describe as our mystery tractor. It is a Farmall F12, a small 12 horsepower tractor powered by kerosene, though it also has a small tank to hold gasoline for the purpose of starting. F12s were built between 1932 and 1938 when they evolved into the F14. Essentially these machines were scaled down versions of the Farmall Regular which itself evolved into the F20. As our tractor is red it is likely that it was built later than 1936. Prior to this Farmall were charcoal grey with red wheels. As yet we have not found any identifying tag on the vehicle to help us pin fown its date of manufacture more decisively.

This is a 1939 Case tractor donated to us by the USAF. We even have a picture of it when it was on display at Lackland AFB. It was prepared for storage very well. When we decided to relocate it, because it's old, once prominent location had become a shaded picnic area near to a new concrete slab for a future building, the wheels and gears turned freely, despite years of inactivity. This led an adventurous soul or to wonder if it could not be got going again.

This is a 1947 John Deere Model M tractor. They are affectionately known as the "Johnny Popper" because of the unique sound of their two cylinder engines. This tractor came to us from an orchard a few miles outside of Fayetteville, Arkansas. It was hauled back to San Antonio, in the rain, at 45 MPH, by Ben accompanied by 2002 Chairman, Hugh Hemphill. Who says rank does not have it's privileges?

Although both engines are about the same size and weight, one, the Stutz Bearcat, would be considered to be huge. The other, a marine engine, would be considered small. This is a function not only of their intended applications, either. The Stutz motor is infinitely more powerful, as well.

If you really need to get there, this would be the truck to do it. This 1968 Kaiser 6 X 6 army truck is a mainstay for military forces to this day. They served in Vietnam and Desert Storm, and there must be something very sound about the basic design for them to have survived so long in such demanding roles.

TTM is not an affluent museum in any way. We depend entirely on the generosity of our visitors but we do have a lot of friends in the business community as well. Our strongest supporter is S.M.T. Truck Lines, the last independent trucking company in San Antonio. They have done so much for us, and this truck, donated in June of 2002 is just the latest example. It has mounted in the bed a powerful yet compact air compressor. We are proud to have the truck painted in the standard yellow of S.M.T., and we have added some decals, indicating our name, our railroad's logo, the L & W, and also that the truck is a donation from S.M.T. I hope visitors to this site from other museum's are lucky enough to have such a good friend.

Site Navigation & Links

Many of the pages below will have sub-directories of their own.

•Main Page•
•Hours of Operation & Location•
•The Longhorn & Western Railroad•
•S.A.G.R.E.S. - San Antonio Garden Railroad Society•
•TTM'S Road Vehicle Collection;
•A.M.R.E. - Alamo Model Railroad Engineers•
•The Longhorn Chapter of the National Railroad Historical Society•
•Private Parties at TTM•
•School & Private Group Visits•
•Santa's Holiday Depot;
•Big Engines, Small Engines•
•History of San Antonio Transportation•
•Links to Other Related Web Sites, Books, Videos, Etc•
•Contacting the Museum;