Owls Head museum to show antique snowmobiles

OWLS HEAD – At least Jay Carsley admits his love affair with the snowmobile is problematic.

“It’s a collecting hobby that’s gotten way out of control,” he deadpanned, describing the more than 65 vintage and antique snow machines his family owns.

Carsley will bring nine examples from the collection to Saturday’s Antique and Vintage Snowmobile Festival at the Owls Head Transportation Museum. It’s the first such event for the museum, located off Route 73 south of Rockland.

Snowmobile owners from around the state will join Carsley in bringing their most interesting machines to the museum. Also on display will be antique snowplow trucks and snowblowers and the museum’s 1926 Model T Ford snowmobile.

On tap are dog sled demonstrations and snowmobile rides in the Model T machine and others, weather permitting, along with children’s activities, snowmobile movies in the museum’s auditorium and a presentation by a representative of the Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife.

After the internal combustion engine was perfected, and the Model T became accessible to the masses, it was just a matter of time before someone tried to make it go in the snow. But Carsley, who operates Cove-Side Wheel and Ski in Newport with his brother, said snowmobiles didn’t gain popular appeal until the 1950s.

“The snowmobile as we know it,” he said, was manufactured by Polaris and Ski-Doo from 1955 to 1959.

The early rigs used a conveyor belt to drive the machine, usually a strip of canvas banded with metal cleats. That gave way to rubber belts with metal cleats, and, finally, to the present all-rubber belt, Carsley said.

Steering also has improved. The early models had no front suspension, resulting in a rough ride. Leaf springs were introduced and, finally, independent front suspension, which began to appear in the early 1970s, he said.

Noise diminished in the early 1970s, as well, with the machines moving from fan and ambient air cooling to liquid cooling.

Carsley, 42, remembers when his father began selling snowmobiles in the family business.

“For me, there’s nostalgia. I was 4 when Dad started selling snowmobiles,” he said, and he tends to collect the brands his father sold back then.

“I tend to like the early to mid-’70s racing sleds,” Carsley said, and the odd-duck models of the late 1960s.

He plans to bring a 1973 Whip-It, the only snowmobile brand ever to be manufactured in Maine, specifically in Jay. Most now are manufactured in Minnesota and Quebec, Carsley said.

“It’s a very addictive hobby. If you get beyond two, you’re pretty much done for. You’re over the abyss,” he joked.

Vintage models are those from the mid-1980s and older, while antiques are those from the 1950s, he said. “Most of our collection is what would be considered vintage,” Carsley said.

Other notables in the snowmobile world expected to attend and show their machines are Wayne Campbell of the Antique Snowmobile Museum in Millinocket, and Paul Bernier and Jonny Wakefield of United Sports Antique & Vintage Snowmobile Gallery in Turner.

The public is invited to bring and display modern snowmobiles in the museum’s parking lot. Owners of pre-1987 snowmobiles are invited to exhibit free of charge. Exhibitor gates open at 8:30 a.m. No preregistration is necessary.

Maine Snowmobile Association and snowmobile club members will receive a reduced admission rate of $5. A family rate of $15 for parents and children is being offered for the day.

The festival opens at 9:30 a.m. Admission prices for seniors is $8; for adults, $9; for children 5-11, $6, and free for children under age 5.