Overview

WARNING: I have discovered that google is redirecting mobile traffic to a prescription drug site. you can enter the site directly by typing rockislandplowco.com directly into your URL bar. I will try to figure out how to fix this. 

Welcome to the new RIPC website. Please use the navigation pages on the left to look around. Please note this is a total rebuild of the original website and I am still working on pages. If you cannot find the information you are looking for  the original page is still available through http://heidertractors.com/.

 

Reproduction Gas Tanks

Bob Clark <4bobclark@gmail.com> 989-329-1588  is doing a run of Heider gas tanks, both the split and single tank. 

2/3/2022

WARNING: I have discovered that google is redirecting mobile traffic to a prescription drug site. you can enter the site by typing rockislandplowco.com directly into your URL bar. I will try to figure out how to fix this. It doesn’t seem to be anything on the website side, so I am trying to figure out if its a google issue. 

I have not been active on updating the webpage while working on the book, and have made some substantial gains in research. unfortunately, I just have not had much inclination to devote time to the website. I do occasionally post to facebook, youtube and smokstack.com. We are intending to debut the Heider D restoration project at the Plow City show being held in march in conjunction with Gathering of the green. There will also be a substantial Moline Plow Co display and displays for other Quad Cities manufacturers. 

3/19/2019

A few minor updates have been added. I now feel like I have a good overview of William J Brownes role in the Browne Sulky and the B.D. Buford Plow Co and why he left to seek employment with Morrison Bros. The Browne page HERE has been updated. Also, I have added a new listing for the California Gang on the plows page and catalog covers to the catalogs page. 

 

11/11/18

Its been a busy fall and as usual have done nothing much with these pages. The big news of course was the Dick Bockwoldt sale with his very nice original paint Heider with lift plow which sold for a record $39,900. This was over twice what all but one Heider C in the last few years has sold for, and two of the last five, despite being running had sold for under $9000. Quality pays. Full results can be seen on Aumanns catalog. We ran the Canadian special up, it was a local tractor close to home, but we weren’t able to get it, in fact we came home with none of the tractors.  I have also started a facebook group.  Our show at Geneseo was good for us and saw us thresh for the first time with the Heider DU 18-30 and plow with the H5 as well as pick corn with the G2. 

11/4/18 Whoops!

Well, no good deed goes unpunished. What was supposed to be a regular minor update to the software ended up as a giant mess. the site is backed up and could be restored, but the database driving it was corrupted and would no longer allow me to use the old theme, hence the new look. Once the site is back functional, I’ll be posting some updates. 

7/14/18

The last surviving building in Rock Island that was part of the Rock Island Plow Co is coming down. In retrospect, its surprising this building has survived this long considering it has been abandoned for decades and has deteriorated to unsafe conditions. https://wqad.com/2018/07/09/vintage-agribusiness-ready-for-wrecking-ball-in-rock-island-expansion-project/  This was the tallest building at the RIPC factory and was fed by two covered bridges and an endless belt elevator. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

5/28/18

I am going to try something new on the front page and start listing to some tractors for sale and coming up on auction here. 

5/1/8

The first of the implements pages is now online, pre 1900 sulky and gang plowsI will probably go back and work on more of the main pages now, but wanted to get a template done while what I learned on the wrench page was fresh. I also need to work more on the MolinePlowCo.com page. 

4-22-18 through 2-2-18 Deleted so this page isn’t so long

I had not planned to really start the rewrites at this point, but one thing leads to another and I ended up doing some serious revisions on the history pages. When I wrote them, I perhaps relied too much on modern sources. Since  then, I have gained access to a lot of material I hadn’t had. Although there is a lot more to write about in some cases, I have to save some things for the book right? Anyway, there is now much more information on the Branch Houses, Buford & Tate, B.D. Buford & Co and Rock island Plow pages. For the moment, i am going to take a break on the history pages and go back to the tractor pages.  For seeing what is new, if you see pictures it means I have spent time working on that page. If there are no pictures, chances are its a cut and paste from the old site. speaking of, all but the front page can still be reached through http://heidertractors.com/

1-26-18

Welcome to the new RIPC website. I know not much has happened the last almost two years. A couple of reason for that. First off, I lost the program I had been using. Second, I knew in my heart that that was a sign I’d reached the limits of that program anyway, so was looking for options. I played around with a few web builders, but hadn’t been getting serious because: Third, I really didn’t have a lot of interesting updates to write about. I actually hadn’t realized how outdated some of the pages were until I went and wrote the RIPC series for Vintage Tractor Digest as part of a series on early Tri City tractors including the Dain, Melvin, Bolte, Western Implement crawlers, Velie  and Rood & VanDervoort. As I write this, one of the final articles in the series on the Moline Plow Company is heading to print.  I think they are well worth checking out if I do say so myself and if there’s interest, we might be able to talk the gals into a compendium of the articles.

So, here we are. In September, just before our home show at Geneseo IL, Loren Book contacted me about being on a committee to plan and host a reunion of Moline Plow Co Universal Tractors, which will be held in 2019 at the Geneseo IL grounds. Out of that grew the immediate need for a Moline Plow website, which I jumped into. MolinePlowCo.Com was born, sister site to this one and a serious reason to get back into website building. This front page will serve as introduction and change log. For the time being, the old website is still online aside from the front index page, using http://heidertractors.com/ will take to the Heider page and from there you can navigate to the old pages. This will disappear in a couple of months as I get the new site fully operational. 

So whats new? Right now, everything and nothing. New website, new layout, new everything. To start with I will be importing from the old site into the new pages with some editing on the more serious issues, but its going to be lean for a couple of weeks with a lot of the text up but not pictures. Pictures will be a big change that will allow much better linking between thumbnails and full size images and will be mostly automatic so fewer broken links. I have a lot less flexibility on layout so expect a lot more gallery type layouts.

In the semi near future, I do plan to add some pretty significant new content including a full break down of the implement lines by year and a wrench section (these two developed out of each other).  Another change is I plan to substantially expand the other local tractors section in the future based on the research I did for the VTD articles though this will be longer term.