Who has one of these in their collection?

A friend of mine was at Little Canada Days near St Paul, MN and noticed this carnival ride...sure makes me want one!  It also gives me an idea to present to the Orange Spectacular Board for the next show!  Carnie ride section!

When i was a kid in the 60s and 70s there was a carnival that came through our part of Mo. (ROSE CITY RIDES) And all of there rides were powered by Allis Chalmers power units. we also have an ALLIS CHALMERS...B-125 power unit on a portable welder.

Edited by ctbowles58 - 21 Aug 2012 at 9:23pm

There was a carnival group around here that had all there rides powered by AC power units. I use to love hearing the govenor kik in on them. 

I remember as a kid the local fair had all Allis powered rides. Hildebrands Midway of Fun Shows.

 

I have a nephew out in California that works for a carnival. I hadn't talked to him in some time till last summer and I asked if they used Allis Chalmers engines. He said they had just switched the last ride over about 6 months before and they scrapped the engine out

Last I knew, Smith's Amusements out of Stratford IA still used a few AC engines on their stuff.

 There were rides at our fair this year that still had the AC motors on them. I always tell the red and green guys. When you really want to trust something your kid is on ,you always see AC motors on them...lol

Good memories.  During the late 1970s - 1980s our local fairs had the Hurricane, Tempest, Rock-O-Plane, Bullet(salt/pepper shakers), & ferris wheel rides that were mostly powered by AC power unit engines.  Carnival area had a AC gas engine smell & sound all its own.  Same ride vendors might also be seen at the Springfield Illinois State Fair.  We just visited the State Fair on August 11th and most carnival rides were driven by central electric gensets run by diesels. 

When the carnivals came to our area we had requests from some of the rides for parts for the B-125 engines. 
They were used a lot then.
Good Luck!
Bill Long

Lots and Lots and Lots of B-125 power units out there. Plenty on Carnival Rides and lots of them powering Amish equipment in the area such as sickle bar mowers, crimpers and hydraulic carts.

There is a man in town that worked for the local AC.dealer[GALLOWAY BROS.] for 50+yrs he is in his 80s now, he has told me the story about when the carinival came to town that all the rides was powered by AC.power units ,one time in the early 50s one of the engines went bad, the one that thay ran the Farris-wheel with, so thay orderd a new power unit from GALLOWAY-BROS but it was going to take 3 or 4 days to get it and there would be no Farris-wheel rides, so MR. GALLOWAY seeing a chance for some free advertisement took a new WD to the carnival grounds and belted it up to the Farris-wheel, and thay ran the Farris-wheel with the WD until the new power-unit arived, and thay said he sold 3 new WDs by doing so. This is another story but when i was in my late teens to early 20s i worked for Mr. D.F. Galloway one of the Bros. both of the Galloway bros were very tight,D.F Galloway had sold his half of the dealership to his bro Ralph in the mid 60s Mr DF. galloway and me were working on a AC pto driven hay rakeand we needed a 5/16 washer so we walked over to the dealership to get one, the price of the washer was 7cents mr galloway said" thats to damn high", so we went back to the shop and drilled a 5/16 hole in a nickle, this is the truth , but you had to know them...lol those were good times and i am lucky to have known and got to work with the older people like this. well this is off topic but seeing the carnival rides just got me thinking about old times, and the old-timers and the times we had around the old AC. dealership.

Edited by ctbowles58 - 02 Sep 2012 at 10:44pm

most all of the carnaval rides were all powerd by AC, until they went electric!