I wish I had dad's Field Marshal.
It looked something like this, but this picture came off the net because we didn't take any photos of it. Photography was an expensive proposition when it was a working machine.
It was a very unique tractor, a hand cranked single cylinder Diesel.
To start it there was two options, one was to put a special glow paper, like a very heavy cigarette paper in a special holder that then screwed into the head. Then you'd set the petcocks to stay open for six revelations of the engine and crank for all you were worth to get it turning as fast as possible before the petcock closed.
There was a special mechanism at the flywheel that controlled the petcock through a pulley and cable system. The pulley ran in groves on the flywheel that worked rather like the threads on a bolt. They carried the pulley to the inner edge of the flywheel where it would drop off releasing the cable which then allowed the petcock to close.
The second option was a cartridge that fit in a special plug at the front end of the head. The cartridge looked a lot like a 12 gauge shotgun shell, but of course it had no lead and no wads.
On a cold engine one would use a glow paper to ensure combustion on the first revolution. It only went around once per cartridge if it didn't fire on the first go.
Once the cartridge was installed, one simply rotated the flywheel to a start mark and then struck the firing pin on the plug with any hammer, and away she would go.
Another thing about that beast was it's clutches. It had two. One for changing gears and one for parking when you didn't want to take it out of gear. The gear changing clutch was operated by a rather normal foot peddle. The parking clutch was a hand leaver behind and below the seat.
Changing gears was something you never wanted to do. It took ages for everything in the tranny to slow down enough to accomplish the task.
As I recall it had only slightly more horsepower then a Fordson 8N but it had a huge amount of torque thanks to it's massive bore and stroke. 8 and 12 inches respectively.
It's still up on the homestead as far as I know but it was torn apart for rebuilding back in the 1960s and never put back together again.
I know many of the important pasts, like pistons, are long gone.
So it will forever be just a memory now.