Nostalgia & History > Gibson tractors, a PNW railroad connection

At a village fair in Lower Nicola BC last weekend, there was a "tractor pull", mostly lawn tractors but there were a couple of "orchard tractors" imported decades ago from the US.

The man running the event called them Gibson tractors.
An internet search showed them as coming from Denver, but the manufacturer started business in Seattle as a machine works. Early in the last century, logging railroads in the Pacific Northwest
used many Fairmont track cars to transport loggers to worksites but found them underpowered for the task, and someone had the Gibson Machine Works make a more powerful engine for the Fairmont speeders.

They were an immediate success, and the business grew to incorporate other applications which needed a small gasoline engine. At some point, Gibsons relocated to Denver and started manufacturing small tractors like the one in my image.

Gibsons seem to have stopped manufacturing in the 1960s, possibly absorbed by another tractor company.

I know that re-engining of track motor cars took place in the railroad industry as well, so perhaps Gibson had a market with the railroads as well. Older track workers talked of taking old hand pump track cars and adding bolt on Slyvester engines.
 

Here is a post link of my pictures of Gibson speeders on the Rayonier logging line at Hoko Camp, Washington.