CAMA Gearing Up For 23rd Annual Fall Festival

KENT — The Connecticut Antique Machinery Association (CAMA) is gearing up for its 23rd annual Fall Festival, scheduled this year for September 29 and 30. The annual festival features an exciting array of live steam exhibits, internal combustion engines, oil field pumps, farm tractors and construction equipment in addition to the Cream Hill Agricultural School and the Connecticut Museum of Mining and Mineral Science.

The CAMA Fall Festival, held at CAMA’s museum, also has great food and beverages and a newly redesigned gift shop. The event will run from 10 am until 4 pm both days. Admission is $7 for adults and $3 for children ages 6-12; ages 4 and under are free.

The museum is on Route 7, one mile north of the village of Kent and adjacent to the Sloane Stanley Museum of Early American Tools. For further information call the museum at 860-927-0050 or visit the CAMA website at CTAMachinery.com.

One of the perennial favorites of the Fall Festival is the fully operational three foot gauge railroad. Hawaii Railway Co. #5, a beautifully restored Baldwin steam locomotive built in 1925, will again be powered up and steaming over the rails carrying passengers along a short section of track.

New Additions

The Connecticut Museum of Mining and Mineral Science, the pet project of CAMA president John Pawloski a retired science teacher from New Milford, has doubled its original space and added some exciting new exhibits. The museum is part of the larger CAMA complex and houses one of the best collections of fluorescent minerals in the northeast. A replica of a coal mine shaft, complete with life sized miners in hard hats, narrow walls covered with black coal, flickering lamps and a simulated explosion, add to the illusion of reality

The Mining Museum also features a new rock drilling exhibit with a simulated rock wall and real rock drill. Also on display is a rare Ingersoll Rand rock drill. Another of the new exhibits is titled “Well Logging in the Oil & Gas Industry and Borehole Wall Imaging” and was donated by the Schlumberger Company.

CAMA’s two day fall festival is fun for the whole family and is a rare opportunity to witness these engines in operation as they belch and spew steam, roaring with the power that built a nation.

Highlights of CAMA’s collection of internal combustion engines include a very rare 1890s vintage Hartig gasoline engine that worked daily for many years pumping drinking water at a New Jersey lake resort; a 15 HP Sattley one-cylinder engine that was the largest engine sold out of the Montgomery Ward catalog, and was used to power a sawmill in Brookfield; and a restored ice saw powered by a Witte gasoline engine, mounted on a sturdy wooden sled, which was built by a Vermont blacksmith to harvest ice blocks from ponds and lakes.  

CAMA’s extensive collection of construction equipment has cranes, shovels, graders, rollers, bulldozers, pile drivers, a well driller and trucks. Many of these will be operating during the festival.