- Joined
- Nov 14, 2014
- Messages
- 851
Seems there aren’t many forum members here who post about live steam miniature trains. If you are looking for a cool project to build in your home machine shop, you might consider building, or restoring a Live Steamer. The live steam hobby has grown substantially in the last few years. Quite a few vendors now sell castings and lots of specialized parts a Machinist needs to build a locomotive. Live steam clubs are active in every state and province in North America, and around the world. Most clubs have well developed 7 1/2” gauge railroads which you can run on. These are generally 1.5” to 2.5” scale (1/8th original size) and are designed and built to ride on.
My personal interest is 12” gauge. This is considered to be Grand Scale, or Park Gauge railroading. So named as these miniature trains were popular as commercial ride attractions in community parks at the turn of the century (1900).
Couple of years ago, I restored a 1950 Ottaway, a coal fired 4-4-0 locomotive, and built a small 500’ backyard railway to run it on. Have been adding to it, bit by bit, each year. Here’s a couple of pics of the mainline and my most recent maintenance project - rebuilding the Ottaway’s front end (smoke box) to improve drafting- so it makes steam more efficiently. The first photo shows the new, multi port, “Lempor” ejector nozzle that exhausts steam from the cylinders to draw exhaust gasses from the fire box out of front end. Also, the steam intake plumbing in the smoke box was corroded and failing from 70 years service, so replaced that as well. The piping you see delivers steam from the boiler into the cylinders, mounted below the smokebox on each side of the frame, then, once used, exhausts up into the Lempor ejector, and then blasts up into the petticoat and out the smoke stack. This blast creates a vacuum in the smokebox that draws air through the grates at the rear of the boiler, causing high levels of combustion on the bed of coal - which creates new steam in the boiler. sort of a perpetual motion machine... anyway its fascinating stuff, and interesting to build and maintain.
Particularily as a retirement hobby.
My personal interest is 12” gauge. This is considered to be Grand Scale, or Park Gauge railroading. So named as these miniature trains were popular as commercial ride attractions in community parks at the turn of the century (1900).
Couple of years ago, I restored a 1950 Ottaway, a coal fired 4-4-0 locomotive, and built a small 500’ backyard railway to run it on. Have been adding to it, bit by bit, each year. Here’s a couple of pics of the mainline and my most recent maintenance project - rebuilding the Ottaway’s front end (smoke box) to improve drafting- so it makes steam more efficiently. The first photo shows the new, multi port, “Lempor” ejector nozzle that exhausts steam from the cylinders to draw exhaust gasses from the fire box out of front end. Also, the steam intake plumbing in the smoke box was corroded and failing from 70 years service, so replaced that as well. The piping you see delivers steam from the boiler into the cylinders, mounted below the smokebox on each side of the frame, then, once used, exhausts up into the Lempor ejector, and then blasts up into the petticoat and out the smoke stack. This blast creates a vacuum in the smokebox that draws air through the grates at the rear of the boiler, causing high levels of combustion on the bed of coal - which creates new steam in the boiler. sort of a perpetual motion machine... anyway its fascinating stuff, and interesting to build and maintain.
Particularily as a retirement hobby.
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