Empire Cruban Steam Car

This is a one of a kind Empire steam car made by the Cruban company out of New York. There is a slightly larger version of this vehicle, probably a small bus, in the Lake Fond du Lac area of Wisconsin about which no

written material is known. There is a long story to be told later about the car being purchased by Dr. Luckey in New Jersey and stored in a shed and then purchased by Forrest Detrick in Ohio, Bucyrus that is, to be copied to make a modern steam car. In 1954 Lee Gaeke of Super Steam out of Inkster, Michigan made a nice looking four cylinder compound engine that appears to have some of the Empire DNA in it. Detrick’s widow sold this car in the late 1950’s.

Detail of the Logo from the picture below

This car is being refurbished in Dayton, Ohio and will be running soon. The engine is very clever in that it is a three cylinder compound. The HP cylinder is in the middle and it exhausts into a steam chest that is the steam jacket for all three cylinders and also the receiver. The outer two cylinders are the LP ones. Instead of having different sized cylinders they just made two more of the same size for the LP side. The boiler is very much like the Stanley, vertical water tube, except that there is a junior sized identical diameter boiler on top as an economizer. This gives a person twice as many tubes to swage.