The Internal Combustion Museum is a working exhibition housed in a dedicated 5,000 square foot building which is open to the public the first Saturday of the month, April through October. Also at our Summer and Fall shows. We collect and restore to operating condition Flywheel Engines, Dynamos, D.C. motors and accessories. Some of the engines and Dynamos are in operating condition. Some are in the process of being restored to running condition. We always have some engines running at our shows. We also collect and display old photos, signs and tools of yesteryear. We have vintage flat belt driven air compressors, water pumps and a vacuum pump on display.

The museum provides a home for our collection of technology dating from around 1870s to the early 1920s. We have historic electrical exbibits by names such as George Westinghouse & Thomas Edison, Crocker Wheeler, Cutler Hammer and others.

Anyone who has an interest in restoration work including making parts out of wood and metal is encouraged to contact us for details about joining. We can also use help with general maintenance and house keeping as well as improvements & grass cutting. Experience is helpful but not required. We can teach what you need to do. You can contact Steve or stop by to visit most any Saturday.

Our Rural Life Museum is dedicated to preserving the “living” side of the culture. Most of the items have been donated by members and others who are interested in the preservation of their links to the past. The museum features a typical Eastern Shore farm house kitchen furnished with items from the period 1900 to the 1930’s. The Museum also features a General Store as it would have existed in this area in the early 1900’s, displays of hand tools that were in use by farmers and craftsmen, memorabilia from the time that Steamships were a primary mode of transportation on the Shore, and much more.

We have a large variety of antique farm machinery and horse-drawn equipment all fully restored and in working condition.

The Tuckahoe Machine Shop Museum is a working exhibition housed in a 4,000 square foot building which opened in 2008. Here, volunteers preserve, restore, and demonstrate early line shaft driven machine tools, and provide machining services for the restoration of Tuckahoe’s collections of antique steam and internal combustion engines and tractors.

The museum was constructed to provide a home for our growing collection of machine tools dating from the 1860s to the early 1920s, complete with an operating overhead line shaft system that provides leather belt connected power to operate most of the machines. Originally, the line shaft would have been powered by a steam or gas engine; in the interest of practicality, ours is driven by a 10 HP electric motor. Some of our “newer” machines are from the period when electric motors were an option, so some of our machines were either ordered with that option or converted from line shaft power.

We have completed the restoration and powering of a Lucas horizontal boring machine (ca. 1912), Rockford planer (ca. 1920), Lathe & Morse lathe (ca. 1885), a Smith & Mills shaper (ca. 1917), a Pratt & Whitney #10 hand milling machine, an early 1900s radial drill, a 1920s Bullard 36-inch vertical turret lathe, an early 1900s Fellows 36” gear shaper and a Kwik-Kut power hack saw. We are currently working on restoring and powering a Putnam gap bed lathe ca. 1886 and a Hendey lathe ca. 1915. Awaiting restoration are a much older Bullard vertical turret lathe ca. 1903, a New Haven 78” pulley lathe ca. 1880, and many others!

When you visit the machine shop museum, we encourage you to try the foot-powered Ephram Brown treadle lathe ca. 1880, the Boynton & Plummer hand-powered shaper ca. 1885, and the Champion post-mounted drill press. And don’t forget to check out the displays that shows how to read a micrometer and drill a square hole!

Anyone who has an interest in “Old Iron” or metal machining is encouraged to contact us for details about joining the Machine Shop Museum – contactus@tuckahoesteam.org

Our Machine Tool Gallery pages document some of the more interesting machines in our collection.

We have a fully functional saw mill run solely off of historic equipment

In the pictures below you can see our Plymouth industrial locomotive ready to pull the excursion cars for our annual show and volunteers preparing our Mini Train in preparation for the show.