Robert Meixell grasped the flywheel handle on a stout 1917 Olds-Seager four-stroke standing in his Westport Island barn, gave it a firm crank and the engine sputtered to life.

“It's the sweetest running engine I've ever seen,” he said with a broad smile.

As Meixell sliced up lengths of cord wood using the saw on his 1953 Ford tractor, he shared the history behind the many engines on his property. 

Meixell is one of two founding members of the Maine Antique Power Association, which began in 1973.

He has just completed the first draft of his book “A Meixell History of Gasoline Engine Involvement,” a project that he began in March 2011. In the book, he describes how his grandfather and father rode by horse and wagon to pick up a three horsepower Maynard engine. That engine installed in their Nazareth, Penn. farm, powered several operations, from a washing machine to a saw for cutting wood.

Meixell's father inherited some later model engines, including the tractor. He then bought many more engines after that, beginning in 1963 with the purchase of a Witte gasoline and kerosene engine for $22 at an auction. Meixell described how he and his sons were bitten by the same engine bug, and throughout the years collected and restored many gas-powered engines. 

After the death of his father, Meixell and his sons brought all of the engines up to Maine. They made 22 trips to Pennsylvania with a 14-foot box truck and a 20-foot trailer.

Since that time, he has been restoring dozens of antique farm engines from his homestead, continuing a 90-year family tradition that has passed from his grandfather to his father and onto his two sons. 

Meixell's engines have been on display at the Owl's Head Transportation Museum, the Boothbay Railway Village and at events throughout Maine. 

Meixell and his son James brought a massive 12-horse “power plant” to the annual Woolwich Day celebration earlier in August. It is a 12-horsepower Fairbanks with 49-inch flywheels – each weighing approximately 500 pounds. 

This engine was being rolled to the dump in Islesboro before a resident there, Lee McCorrison, saved it. Meixell writes that after hauling this monster of an engine to Westport Island with his father's 1957 Chevy pickup, he and son James brought it back to life. It still needs more work, he said, but they have presented the engine at several events since acquiring it. 

The oldest engine in his collection dates back to 1896 and according to Meixell it is one of five of its kind. This Vertical Gearless Olds is the only one to have an electronic ignition; Meixell said the remaining four are ignited using “hot tubes.” 

He said the engine came from a print shop and had been abused; its flywheels were loose and had a damaged crankshaft. Meixell retired from the U.S. Navy and began working for Bath Iron Works in 1968. Around that time, he was able to repair the engine with the help of Harry Wilson, a dedicated machinist and fellow shipyard employee. The engine still runs.

He unearthed the smaller Olds from a pump house on a Woolwich farm after discussing engines with another parent at a school meeting in 2006. Meixell writes in Gas Engine Magazine about how he restored the engine. 

He and his son had found out that the engine had sat in the same place, untouched except by mice, bees and spiders, for over 80 years. They cleaned out a bees' nest and brought the engine to life with little mechanical work, he said. After disassembling and cleaning the engine, he and his son re-assembled it and installed an ignition system, lubricated it and then bolted it to a cart. 

It is a one and three-quarter horsepower engine. Once running, it coughs out a small plume of exhaust between chugs. It shimmies on its four-wheeled cart as the flywheels spin around.

“It's not mine,” Meixell said. “I'm just borrowing it.”

Meixell restored the smaller pump house engine just to see it running again. He said much of what inspires his work is the history behind each of the machines he restores. In his barn is a not just a collection of rust-colored iron machinery, but a maze of stories; the collection demonstrates a culture, a way of life that has nearly been forgotten by advancements in modern technology.