Fair brings steam engine out of retirement

The 2021 Wayne County Fair will reunite a man and his steam engine and bring a favorite exhibit out of retirement.

Dave Tschantz, who’s had a longtime love affair with the 1923 Russell steam engine, originally owned by Wayne Mutual Insurance Co., will be back on board as its engineer on the fair’s opening day. Now under the ownership of the Wayne County Fair board, the historic steam engine will be on display at the Buckeye Agricultural Museum and Education Center on Lincoln Way across from the fairgrounds.

“It’s a lot of fun for me to be back with it again,” said Tschantz, who operated the H. Lester Lee engine from 1984-2001 for parades, local festivals and the Wayne County Fair. It’s familiar whistle, along with the chuffing and popping sounds, attracted fairgoers.

Tschantz was by its side long enough, he said, that younger married couples would stop and tell him they remembered it as a child, and they’d bring their own children to see it.

Tschantz also met his wife, Ann, at the fair while operating the 10-ton steam engine.

With the help of museum staff, Tschantz converted the engine so it now runs on compressed air instead of steam.

In 2001 a similar engine in a steam-powered tractor exploded at the Medina County Fair, killing four people and wounding dozens more. The accident left some uncertainty about the safety of using steam engines.

Tschantz brought the Russell steam engine to the fair that year but didn’t operate it. Instead, he placed lights in the interior boilers so people could see inside. Over the weekend fairgoers had a lot of questions about the Medina County Fair accident, he said.

Then the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks happened on Monday. “After that, no one wanted to know about the steam engine,” he said.

Wayne Mutual Insurance, where Tschantz once worked, went the extra mile and had the steam engine inspected every year even though it decided to no longer operate it. A state law passed after the Medina accident requiring state inspections and operators to be licensed, he said.

Company President Ralph Gresser purchased the steam engine in 1983 from his father-in-law, H. Lester Lee of Cross Creek, Pennsylvania. He had it restored in 1984, and Tschantz became its engineer.

“The (Gresser) family does like to keep up with what’s happening with the engine,” Tschantz said. “They always ask if (the fair board) is taking good care of it, and my answer is always yes.”

During this year’s fair, the steam engine will be moved outside the museum in order to run a 1916 Ohio Bellevue stationary wire-tie baler, according to one of the museum’s curators and fair board member Ron Grosjean. Some of the characteristic sounds may not be as prominent, he said, but when Tschantz blows the engine’s brass whistle, “then it will sound real.”

Museum staff plan to one day mount the air compressor on a wagon designed to look like an old water wagon that would have been used by a threshing crew to haul water from field to field. For now, the engine will be a stationary exhibit.

Tschantz, vice president and general counsel at Christian Healthcare Ministries, is grateful for his association with the steam engine.

“It’s a thrill to watch it run,” he said.