log, Saturday, August 7,1993
incastar
Follow Your Dream With A Stagecoach
JOYCE BUPP
York Co. Correspondent
HALLAM (York Co.) Near
ly everyone has a dream.
Some folks dream of wealth,
some of travel, some of power or
property.
Alex Seigfried II had a dream.
He wanted a stagecoach.
A stagecoach is not an every
day, readily-available item. Still,
from the time he was 14 and work
ed at Lauxmont Farms near
Wrightsville. Alex II had become
enthralled with the idea of owning
this symbol of the old West
“Lct’a build a stagecoach,”
Alex II said to his father, Alex Sr.,
last fall.
Alex Seigfried, Sr., York Rll,
had taken early retirement from
the IBM company and was con
sidering turning <his building/ca
binetry/woodworking hobby into
a second career of building repro
duction furniture. He pondered his
son’s suggestion only briefly.
“You’re out of your mind,” fa
ther replied to son.
Not one to abandon a (beam too
quickly, Alex II persisted. The
operator'of an excavating busi
ness, he hoped someday to own a
small farm where he could keep a
few horses, using them to pull a
stagecoach in public events, like
parades, to advertise his business.
After continuing persuasion from
his son, Alex Sr. agreed to at least
look at a stagecoach.
“We couldn’t find one to go
look at,” he recalls of their dilem
ma. Even the state museum at
Harrisburg had no stagecoach. Af
ter some sleuthing, they tracked
down coaches in the Smithsonian
Institute in Washington, D.C. and
at a Long Island museum. Mean
while, they began researching
stagecoach history and lore.
“Stagecoaches were only made
by the company of Abbott and
Downing, of Concord, New
Hampshire,” relates Alex Sr. “Ab
bot was a wheelwright and black
smith and Downing was a cabinet
maker; they got together in 1832.
Abbott was the ‘engineer’ of the
project and Downing was the ‘per
fectionist’ who had an instinctive
knack for picking the right woods
for the job.”
About 20 years later, the part
ners separated. Their children ran
separate companies for awhile,
eventually got the firm back to
gether and later took in another
partner. In all, five separate com
panies built the coaches, but all
were Abbott-Downing related in
To check dimensions for their stagecoach, the,Siegfrieds first had "sldebows” of
wood steamed to shape, then visually compared the bows to the length and heighth
some fashion.
Abbott and Downing - built both
“mudwagons,” the farm-truck of
the 1800 s and “roadcoaches,” the
travel equivalent of today’s bus.
Mudwagons were more rugged,
squared and utilitarian, for hauling
freight and commodities. Road or
stagecoaches had a more rounded,
stylish design. But they were ne-.
vertheless overland travel vehicles
which needed to traverse rough
roads and ford streams under
weather’s extremes, and required
durability.
“The stagecoach shape is taken
from an eggshell. Its strength
came from the use of tongue-and
groove boards; that was their
strongest method of construction,”
explains Seigfried. “Bows, the
frame of the coach, were steam
bent.”
At peak production, the Massa
chusetts firm made about 2,000
vehicles annually. Abbott and
Downing and its spinoffs remain
ed in business for about 70 years
total. Seigfried estimates that a to
tal of 5,000 roadcoaches were
manufactured in that time. The
last were built about 1910.
“There are reportedly 12 of the
originals left in the United States,
two of them at the Smithsonian,”
he notes. Most he believes, just
rotted away, abandoned to motor
ed transportation.
In 1832, a roadcoach sold new
for about $1,200, a considerable
investment for its time. Today, an
original stagecoach is worth about
$90,000.
But, a brand new one can be
had for $25,000. That’s the price
tag on Siegfried Woodworking’s
hand-crafted stagecoach. Their
coach No. 1 is getting a few final,
finishing touches, with parts of
three more in various stages of
construction at their Hallam fac
tory.
A hand-painted eagle, fin
ished in gold leaf, Is the
numbered, signature identi
fication of the Siegfried
Woodworking coach.
Shiny, fire-engine red with bright yc .
completed stagecoach No. 1 is beautifully handcrafted, while durable and roadwor
thy.
The beautifully-crafted, fire en
gine-red coach is finished with
black and yellow pin-stripe details
and a decorative eagle, in gold
leaf, on each side of the front boot
It runs on a bright-yellow under
carriage, with rubber-edged steel
wheels turning on Farmington
hubs and Timken bearings. Pic
ture-perfect, Stagecoach No. 1 is a
tribute to determination, research,
long hours, inventiveness, sweat
and some heated “discussions”
along the’way.
Alex Sr. had woodworking “in
his blood.” His father and grandfa
ther were cabinetmakers in the
Bloomsburg area and dabbled in it
over the years. Alex. Sr. even built
several houses. But the project
that really tested his research and
craftsmanship detail skills and
was building a suit of armor for
the Eastern School District’s
knight, the school “mascot.”
“It was team effort that took
thousands of hours of research; I
learned how to research historic
things,” Seigfried says of the
crafting challenge of creating the
suit of thousands of tiny metal
pieces. By comparison, the father
son research on stagecoach build
ing took several hundred hours.
While pictures of stagecoaches
are plentiful, patterns, and direc
tions are virtually non-existent.
And, various construction me
thods have been utilized over the
years for different coach elements.
The Smithsonian granted them
Alex Siegfried, Sr. is the woodcraftsman of the stage
coach-building team. His wood-and-glue lamination tech
nique was adapted from boatbuilding and is similar to the
method usedjp making paper,mache*.
permission to measure their ori
ginals and assisted with reproduc
tion copies of scale drawings of
the stagecoach’s design.
“Those were good for ideas, but
were not a usable scale that we
could work from. And, we had to
adapt the design to what is avail
able today,” explains Seigfried.
Having a slender piece of oak
steamed in the shape of a sidebow
for their finished coach gave them
a guide for the size of the under
carriage they would need to build.
After serveral weeks of setting up
equipment and workspace in Alex
Sr.’s garage, stagecoach building
got under way. Alex 11, the black
smith worker of the team, spent a
full month handcrafting the exten
sive and exacting ironwork details
of the undercarriage.
Their intent was to build the
first complete coach in the garage;
but in January, they were offered
space in a large factory facility
nearby. Already crowded and in
need of a painting room, they put
aside coach building and spent se
veral more weeks again moving
and setting up their equipment It
was early April when building of
the coach construction was resum
ed.
Construction of the curved sid
ed, wooden coach is done by lam
inating several thin layers of air
dried hardwoods, mostly oak and
ash, and clamping the layers to a
shaped form to dry. The layering
of thin sections of woods a
*lCotnes{cad
d/otes
technique similar to paper-maphe
creates a finished coach shell
that is light, while durable and
very roadworthy. According to
Alex, Sr., the project's wood
worker, he finally settled on the
laminating technique because of
its success in boat building.
“We did a lot of arguing over
how to build these sides,” grins
Alex 11.
They are as strong, or stronger,
than the originals were,” explains
Siegfried. “We wanted a good
looking piece that people can ac
tually use, for parades, for wed
dings, for having fun with.”
The cab is seven-feet long, with
a 3 'A feet boot on the front where
the driver is seated. A trunk carrier
on the back adds additional length.
When set on the 16-feet-long un
dercarriage, the completed coach
towers well over eight feet high. A
metal-crafted step boosts passeng
ers climbing in and out of the cab.
Modem wheels and hubs and
avoidance of leather belts and
straps in the design have eliminat
ed the tedious everyday greasing
and maintenance that original
stagecoaches required. In fact, the
rubber belts on which die coach
rides like the shocks in an auto
mobile are virtually mainten
ance free, with great strength and
little stretch or sag. The Siegfrieds
estimate the belting and undercar
riage can probably support some-
(Turn to Pag* B 3)