TRACTOR TALK

IH ELECTRALL & THE SUPER M-TA DIESEL FARMALL

International Harvester in the early 1950s was innovative and unafraid to market new things. One of those things was called Electrall and it debuted for 1954 in the form of a tractor-mounted generator kit that cranked out 10 kw 3-phase 120/208 volts. “Yes, but why?” you may ask.

Even in the early 1950s, the electrification of rural farming areas was not complete, nor was it particularly reliable in many places. As a result, many farmers had standby generators. They weren’t there just to keep the house lights on and the wife’s fridge going, either. This was back in the days when many farmers did it all. A few dairy cows, steers, hogs, sheep, chickens, plus crops. Farmers with a small dairy had electric milking machines and refrigerated milk tanks and anyone who knows the dairy biz knows a power outage can run your day… and old Bessie’s.

On top of that, International Harvester (IH) had some ideas about the way implements should run. Shaft-driven PTO implements were just getting a foothold in the tractor market and only the newer tractors had them. At that time, most implements like hay balers and pullbehind combines were self-powered using small gasoline engines. In the case of the baler, the engine ran the baling machinery and the tractor towed the baler and hay wagon. IH contended self-powered implements were more efficiently powered by an electric motor fed juice by a tractor-mounted generator. It could probably have also been argued that an electrically driven implement offered a more

precise, constant speed, less mechanical complexity, better efficiency and more safety over a Pto-powered unit. IH offered kits that could attach Electrall directly to many of their newer tractors.

Unfortunately, the idea failed miserably. In typically quirky fashion, IH had shot holes in their own idea by introducing the Electrall just as they were introducing live PTOS in their tractors and live PTO was to become the farmer’s best friend. So, IH adapted and began to offer Pto-driven generators mounted on a trailer or on a Fast Hitch-mounted skid. By then, the electric implement idea had gone completely by the wayside but IH still had a crapload of generators left to sell. This idea brought more acceptance and IH soon upped the PTO generator rating to 12.5 KW.

The final variant of the Electrall debuted in 1956 for the S-line light trucks. It was the same 12.5 KW unit then offered for the tractors but it was mounted in the bed of a

 Don Olson’s ’54 Super M-TA diesel Farmall (alternatively known as the MD-TA), with an Electrall and a Model 55W baler behind it, are the poster children for illustrating one of International Harvester’s many strange but wonderful ideas. The...

 The Model 55 baler was one of the better ones on the market in the era. In the pre-live PTO era, they were self-powered with a small 4-cylinder Continental engine. For the electric version, a 208-volt, 3-phase GE motor replaced the gas engine and it...

 The Super MD-TA and a rare Model 55 electric baler turned a lot of heads at the 2017 Red Power Roundup in Iowa, especially when Don Olson fired it up. Better farming with electricity for sure!

 This was old-time farming at its best—or worst, depending upon your point of view. If you were lever-shy, this wasn’t the place to be. This tractor also came with a side PTO (not accessible with the Electrall mounted) and rear PTO and has a hydraulic...

 The Electrall mounted side-saddle and was driven by belts from a gearbox and pulley that took power from the live PTO system. You can see the second face of the IH gas-start diesel in this shot, the tiny carburetor and distributor.