Musee Maurice Dufresnes

The Musée Maurice Dufresne mixes and matches its exhibits to dramatic effect. On the left is a 1959 Buick Electra. On the right is something even weirder. If I've read the guide correctly, it's a 1914 Latil artillery tractor.

We were on a road trip down the Loire valley from Le Mans and were trying to get a kitten out from under the BMW and Morgan following a stop at a road side bar. Someone picked up a tourist information leaflet about the Maurice Dufresnes museum and, once we'd helped the bar owners get little Agnes out from under the car and firmly back under house arrest, we decided to give it a try.

And boy are we pleased we did.

For our party, it had something for everyone - steam engines, cars, motorbikes and aeroplanes. And in the old mill building on an island in the River Indre it was wonderfully cool. The watermill still had its machinery in it and in places the water still runs through the building, giving it a wonderfully cool atmosphere on a very hot day. Although the looms and fire arms didn't interest us much, the portable guillotine fascinated everyone.

This mobile guillotine was discovered by accident in 1960 in pieces hidden in a tunnel in Tours,  covered in scrap iron and wood. M Dufrsenes took it home left it for 33 years and one day realised what he'd brought home. Photo from museum website (see link above)

There are even the wax heads of some of its victims.

But the wonderful vehicles were what we liked the best.

We particularly liked the portable engines with the haycock fireboxes.The French to do these especially well and this one was tiny. You probably could just about get half a donkey between those shafts. I'm not sure who built it but they made a lovely job of it. Rated at 5hp it was coupled to a cocoa thresher. We wondered if the five of us could've carried it out and taken it home with us. It it had been abandoned in a French field somewhere I'm sure we would've - except the redoubtable M Dufresnes had got to it first.

The Musée Maurice Dufresne was quite easy to find. You know you've got there when you see a Fordson tracstor on a very high plinth. Andrew the tractor man really wanted to take this home with him, for sticking it up there seemed such a waste. If he had his Land Rover and trailer with him I think he'd've brought it home.

In the compound outside the entrance to the museum where many Vintage Things. Among the old tractors and portable steam engines where these two tired old cars. I think the rear one is a rear wheel drive Citroen of the type that made the company's fortunes. The Traction Avant, brilliant though it was, contributed to the downfall of the marque and its founder. To me, the car in the foreground looks Citroen-ish but the vertical flutes on the radiator make me uncertain whether it is one of Andre's best sellers.

Outside next to the car park were a few rusting relics that attracted us immediately. I began to get an insight into what motivated M. Dufresnes. Trained as a blacksmith, he travelled all over rural France, visiting obscure places in his work and bringing home some rusting hulks that only he could see were worth saving. I think he understood that the important thing was, first of all, to save the treasures that he stumbled upon and worry about restoring them later. It occurred to me what an understanding wife he had. Indeed, Jeannine gets a mention in the free English language guide the friendly staff gave me. Maybe she was as much an engine punk as Magnificent Maurice.

Most of the exhibits were very smart but I don't know if they run. Some had little concrete block walls around them so I couldn't work out how they could get out. Others, such as the cars stacked close to the rafters, looked like they'd been roofed in.

But I can't believe Maurice Dufresnes restored everything himself. He must have had some help. The mill is enormous and the island in the Indre almost big enough to have its own time zone. The museum seemed to go and on and on and on. Each exhibit within the mill looked really cherished and I could just picture M Dufresnes gleefully loading it onto his lorry, having saved it for preservation.

I even got the feeling that the bigger, less shiny items outside represented the happy results of a heavy metal treasure hunt. It takes some time for a tank or a steam roller to rust away completely but sometimes the scrap price must have got so high there must have been a race against time to retrieve a steam roller or railway locomotive from its resting place and bring it to a place of safety like M Dufresnes mill. It was here that we saw someone - "Un frére de vapeur" - actually working on the firebox of a steam roller.

When I travelled in the Auvergne a few years ago, I was fascinated to note the number of horse drawn carts that still stood rotting in the corners of many fields. Next to where I was staying was a farm that had two old tractors, one of them a British Field Marshall used to chop wood. The punch from its single cylinder diesel engine made it ideal for this work. It seemed to me that France went from the horse straight to internal combustion without ever exploring the steam engine. But here at the Musée Maurice Dufresne it seems there were plenty of steam engines kicking about rural France.

This nicely primered steam roller is a French steam roller made by S J Baillot of Montceau-des-Mines, works no. 427. A volunteer was working on the firebox when we visited. Andrew pointed out the thickness of the rolls - "That engine's not done much work."

I felt I was in an exhibition of sculpture where even the humblest industrial implement was elevated to to the status of an "objet d'art". Sometimes, when I look at some mechanical nicety, I can tune into what the designer had in mind and the way the Musée Maurice Dufresne is laid out makes this especially easy. Somebody had a lot of fun creating these machines. It's okay to show off like this because it enthuses others of a like mind and if you're into steam punk or rolling sculpture, engineering, art or industrial design, the Musée Maurice Dufresne's got plenty of everything.

This is a 1939 Georges Irat and like so much on display at the Musée Maurice Dufresne it was the first of its kind that I'd ever seen. It's a sports car based on the Citroen Traction Avant.

There are similar museums in Britain but I doubt if they have such a good restaurant. A couple of bus loads of pensioners were also visiting the museum but I don't think they penetrated the mill. We had the place pretty much to ourselves while they relaxed in the sunshine and played dominoes.

Emerging from the mill, blinking in the sunlight, we were confronted by this 1912 fireless steam locomotive - a fireless fire drake! Unfortunately my guide doesn't say who built it although it's typical of the weird and wonderful stuff featured throughout the museum.

I'll be going to the Musée Maurice Dufresne again soon.