the fun part of what I think of as this hobby, is finding new stuff, that's 100 years old... but new to me... and a bit crazy in design

https://www.facebook.com/theantiquetractorlife/posts/pfbid0TaeKBNKWy19ki2m4LoiG2359sY7dUiz8McmpXYGmU5hw3tkGSSQZaHdyoAPsRiPAl

And then when I try to learn more about this... I find I discovered these 4 years ago. Lol.. https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2020/03/the-line-drive-tractor-thanks-steve.html oh well, at least this is a new photo I hadn't found until now

I haven't heard from Al Bergstrazer in a long time, but in 2020, he commented 

 There were a handful of manufacturer's prior and during WW1 who made line drive tractors, Rumley as I recall was one-but it was specifically for agricultural use. 

The manufacturers called them "Rein Steer". Lacrosse made a Model M

 It kind of made sense, because horse drawn farm implements were all made so the operator sat on the implement and operated all of the controls from that seat, as well as the weight of the driver aided in the operation of the implement in that a lot of them were ground driven

So you either figured out a way to rig up your horse drawn equipment to operate from the tractor seat, or bought new equipment. 

Then there was the line drive as a third but not popular alternative. There were several problems with line drives, the most obvious is that it wasn't a team of horses, who knew how to follow a furrow, or a road without you constantly yanking on the reins. 

A line drive was generally a lot of work to operate. Then there was unhitching it and hooking up something else, it was kinda a bear to do, either pull the trailer up, or wrangle the line drive-sort of. There was a company (Emco power horse) in Utah who made these but only a 4wd version just before and after WW2

there was a site that had a comprehensive guide to them all, http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/TRANSPORT/reinstractor/reinstractor.htm  but it doesn't work anymore, only the images show up in Google image search.