| By Big Radio News Staff |

The exhibit won’t be ready by this fall’s Rock River Thresheree at Edgerton’s Thresherman’s Park.

But by next year, the Thresheree will have a huge upgrade in antique engine power added to its living-history park.

In what is a $3-million gift to Thresherman’s Park, United Alloy founders Tom and Michele Baer are donating a set of massive, electric-generating engines built more than 100 years ago by Beloit’s Fairbanks Morse.

Rock River Thresheree director Todd Ligman says the engines are huge. One of them, a six-cylinder model, weighs 60,000 pounds.

The Baer family bought the engines during purchase of a power plant in Minnesota. They’ve spent years being rehabbed in a machine shop at an Ironwood, Michigan mine.

The Baer donation covers the construction of a new building being built now at Thresherman’s Park that the Thresheree aims to open next year — a replica, circa-1900 electric plant. The building will house the engines.

Ligman says the engines will be set up in a system that visitors to the replica powerhouse can see — and feel — in action.

The Rock River Thresheree is a nonprofit group that runs Thresherman’s Park, a living-history grounds featuring primitive, antique and classic, tractors, engines and large machinery in operation.

The group’s mission is to used to preserve and educate people on the U.S.’s agricultural and industrial heritage.

This year’s Rock River Thresheree, a festival celebrating the Thresheree’s massive machinery, runs Aug. 30 – Sept. 2. at 51 East Cox Rd, Edgerton.