Community Corner

Long Forgotten Steam-Powered Car Makes its Return to Red Bank

At the Liberty Hose Car Show, two cars, powered by steam, sit among rows of American muscle.

Among the rows of American muscle, classic British, early Bond-era rides, and 1930’s gangster-flick coupes at the Liberty Hose Car Show in Red Bank Sunday sat a couple of cars that looked like a stiff wind might blow them over.

Reproductions of more than 100-year-old cars, these two rides are steam powered, artifacts of a long since passed personal conveyance transition era between the horse and buggy and the mass-produced Model T Ford.

The cars are called Locomobiles and are the product of three years of inventiveness that ended just after the turn of the century. The turn of the 20th century, that is. Though the Locomobile Company of America competed and fought with horse-drawn businesses of the time, it would soon find itself superseded by the more efficient gasoline-powered car.

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Shrewsbury resident Rick Stoeber drove his steam car from his house to the car show on White Street. That’s pretty much the limit for these kinds of rides. Running on kerosene and 20-gallon drums of water, these cars reach a max speed of about 25 miles per hour and travel about 15 miles or so.

Stoeber has entered a car each of the nine years the Red Bank Volunteer Fire Department company has run the event, a memorial to former fire chief Bob "Doc" Holiday. .

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