By CINDY LADAGE
Illinois Correspondent

WATERLOO, Ill. — The sun was shining the first Sunday in June for the Waterloo Tractor Show. The annual show was held at the Waterloo Fairgrounds near St. Louis, where owners brought their antique tractors to parade and share with other folks.

Visitors were able to enjoy the one-day event, thankful for a break from the pounding rain that has flooded fields and overflowed rivers in Illinois all along the Illinois and Mississippi rivers.
While many of the tractors were the usual John Deere Green and International Harvester Red, this year brought an influx of Case and Allis Chalmers to the show. Not only were these brands on tap for visitors, Earl Doeer had a few unique items to make collectors take a second glance back and ask, “What is it, and how was it used?”

Doeer, a JD man who usually brings his crawlers, went for something a little out of the ordinary this year. The first item, he found on the Internet site www.craigslist.org

“My son, Dan, called me and said there is a Yanmar Dump Truck C30 Carrier on there,” he said.

After a bit of negotiating, Doeer paid a small price for this great item and took the Yanmar home. “I don’t know what year it is. I got it this winter. It was owned by a well-drilling company, who used it to transport stuff,” he said.

The little dump carrier is a hearty machine. “It started even on the coldest winter day,” he said. “It has a one-cylinder diesel engine and I have used it to take out in the woods and fill it full of firewood to justify buying it.”

Besides the Yanmar, Doeer also had an M274 Military mechanical mule that can be used for hauling. ”It can haul 1,000 pounds of cargo,” he said.

“It was developed out of a requirement for infantry ammunition, light cargo, personnel and weapons carrier. It was adopted for service in 1957 and used by the Army, Marine Corps and, to a limited extent, by the Navy, Seabees and Air Force.”

Another unusual machine was Wayne Zoeller’s Ferguson Pony. He hails from Festus, Mo., and is a retired tool-and-die man who said his Ferguson Pony is rather rare because only about 940 were made.

“It was built when Ferguson merged with Massey Harris; it is like the Massey Pony. It is quite a collector’s item,” Zoeller said.
While like the Massey Harris Pony, the gray color is different from the usual Massey red, and the Ferguson spindle is 2 inches longer, as well. This little tractor was originally built to heat up the competition with the IH Farmall Cub.

Speaking of IH, at this year’s show there were two novelty items – half-scale Farmall 560s. Norman Rex of Fosterburg, Ill., and Lloyd Bockstruck from Dorsey brought their newly completed IH models.
It was at the Penfield (Ill.) Historic Days show that Bockstruck saw the models.

“Jack Weaver built models of different brands,” he said. “I was there for the national Ford meeting when I saw them.”
Bockstruck admired the little models and decided to call Weaver to see if he had any models he would sell to Rex and him.

“He said he would build one for both of us,” Bockstruck said.
The base is a Cub Cadet lawn mower; both men supplied their own mowers. They went to Missouri to get the fenders from an IH Cub and the tires and wheels were from a Farmall 560 60-63 corn planter.

The two men had to get the materials that Weaver would need to transform the Cub Cadets into miniature 560s. Many of the items on the little models are from an original IH.

“The lights, seats and hood emblem were all from a 560 farm tractor,” Rex said.

These were just a few of the special tractors on display at this year’s Waterloo show. Each year it has a diverse array of tractors, and this year was no exception.