The Ben Winter Museum is located 1 mile Southwest of Altamont.
When Ben wants to let off steam, he literally lets off steam. He fires up one of
his antique steam engines and relives a time when threshing a field of corn was an all-day
job, requiring half a ton of coal and a thousand gallons of water.
Ben grew up with steam engines as his father, Martin G. Winter, did
custom threshing and shredding corn. Ben, as a very young boy, drove the water wagon
with a team of horses as a steam engine required a lot of water for steam, and of course,
had to be fired all the time. His family also did sawmilling and crushed rock with
steam during the earlier years. Later, Ben, his father and his brother operated a
quarry business, grinding limestone and road rock of different sizes. Ben's father
died in 1953, and his brother George followed in 1964, leaving Ben to operate the quarry
alone until he sold the business in 1980.
Ben then took up sawmilling and woodworking with Charles Koss, who
had been a long time employee at the quarry, as his partner. That partnership was
brief as Koss died in 1984.
With encouragement from the Millroad Thresherman
Association, Ben began buying and restoring steam engines in 1981, amassing a large enough
collection that he built a museum next to his home.
The Ben Winter Museum is home to fifteen steam engines, as well as
several gas and oil engines and other antiques ranging from Victrolas to Linotype
machines(from the Altamont News) to a complete pipe organ from St. Paul Lutheran Church
ELCA which is in playing condition.
Each of Bens steam engines projects its own bit of history, which he
relates to everyone who visits. Ben's largest steam engine is the old generating
unit from the former Pet Milk Co. in Greenville. It took three tractor-trailer loads
to transport the whole unit.
"Just the flywheel and pulley alone weigh one hundred
tons," Winter says, adding that when the engine was running in Greenville, it had a
smokestack eighty-five feet tall and fourteen feet wide.
Ben purchased two amusement park trains, a diesel and a steam
engine, in 1991. He then laid thirty-three hundred feet of track through his orchard
which has more than sixteen varities of trees including pecan, apricot, persimmon black
and English walnut and hazelnut. Thirty-five passengers can climb aboard and enjoy
the scenery on a brief train trip.
A greenhouse has been constructed on the south end of the museum
where young orchard plants can begin their long lives along side roses, fig trees, and
orange, lemon and tangerine trees.
Winter also restores old cars and builds clocks and cedar chests;
however, regardless of his seemingly busy life, this sign hangs on the door of a
woodworking room "I'm open when I'm here. I'm closed when I'm tired."
