with factory power steering. His runs on LP, a much cheaper fuel than gasoline.

DeRycke, though, also wanted to stand out in the green and yellow crowd. So the “50” supports a two-row cultivator.

“It just adds extra interest, something else for people to look at,” he said.

“You walk down through here and after a while the tractors start to look alike,” DeRycke added.

Another of his projects also answers a familiar question at tractor shows: What did that look like before restoration?

DeRycke fixed and repainted one side of an “H” built in 1945. The other side still has its chore clothes on and remains a dented, rusty, scratched, oily and faded green.

O’Connor’s combine is meticulously redone, down to aligning the slots on hundreds of screw heads: Each is perfectly vertical.

The entire restoration took more than three years and required a team effort, according to O’Connor.

“A lot of parts had to be made,” he says.

O’Connor’s Model 60 Auger Wagon built in 1960 was parked nearby. The implement was designed to deliver feed but became the forerunner of today’s grain carts used at harvest.

The auger wagon holds 125 bushels, less than half what a typical modern combine can carry in its hopper.

Caught up on all his restoration projects at the moment, O’Connor, 72, hedges on what is next in line.

“My wife asks that every once in a while. Her question is, ‘How many tractors does a man need?’ — It’s an interesting and complicated answer.”

Jack Vinopal of Mauston, Wisconsin, and his sons put three tractors on display during the Two-Cylinder Expo XXIII at the National Cattle Congress. He spent part of Friday answering questions about a two-way plow attached to an “M” built in 1947.