Model Steam Engines

After some time working with wood, like many other woodworkers, I developed Asthma so I had to look around for some other activity. Metal turning was an area I knew nothing about so I decided it was time I learned, I bought a cheap Chinese lathe.In hindsight I guess I would have bought a different one, one with a slotted cross slide for starters, this enables the fitting of a vertical slide so some small milling operations can be performed. However, a whole lot of new skills had to be learned, apart from learning how to use the lathe, welding and brazing now became skills I needed.. Steam engines have always fascinated me, my son-in-law had one and I could never work out how those little donkey engines worked. After buying a little book by Tubal Cain I set upon making my first attempt at building a model steam engine. I was starting to have fun making these little steam engines to the point where I could design and build my own
This is my first attempt at making model steam engine. The engineering is as rough as guts but it works. It is a simple oscillating cylinder engine with the cylinder having two ports, inlet and exhaust and differs from later oscillating types which have only one port which functions for both inlet and exhaust
Here is a collection of steam engines, on the left is a horizontally opposed oscillating cylinder engine, centre a single cylinder, horizontal engine with a high power boiler and on the right a vertical boiler similar to my first engine but incorporating a superheating coil
This beam engine bears some resemblance to one I saw in a book on Stirling and Steam engines. I love these beam engines, they look far more elegant than the vertical oscillating cylinder types
This slide valve engine was more of a challenge. Again, I saw it in a book which had full size plans which I adapted to about one third size. It's not exactly according to the plans since the original had several metal castings which are beyond my skills at present.
This stirling cycle or hot air engine was quite challenging since tolerances are very fine.They're absolutely fascinating and I'm still not quite sure I know how they work
This little beam engine was featured in the Australian Model Engineering magazine. I had to modify the design to get it all to fit together. The original design had outrigger bearings on the main shaft - I couldn't get them to fit properly so left them off
This little Coventry type horizontal steam engine was was built from scratch using photographs of some kit engines as a guide.