Locomotive

IIRC, there's a railroad museum in San Diego's Balboa Park. I'd donate it to whoever is interested so that a lot of people can see it and enjoy it, rather than having it end up in someone's garage, basement, or worse yet, back yard to die a horrible death from the sun, rain, rust, and sand. If you love it, provide for it after you can't. Do it now.

Steve

Steve

Vesouvious - The idea of a steam-powered bicycle sounds strangely interesting to me. Did you finish this project?

Might try the Sacramento State Railroad Museum in (duh) Sacramento. If nothing else they may have some other ideas and suggestions for you. Same for the Western Railway Museum in Suisun City.

Might also look on the Internet for local model train clubs. Again, they may not display it for you but might have some ideers.

If worse comes to worse, I'll do it. :-)

Wayne

P.S. If you modeled it after a real working engine, you should document it and supply as many pictures of the two as possible. Any and all history of the original would go a looooong way.

Check out Traintown

Vaughn

Yes, I did, as you can see from the link "on wheels". Unfortunately I can only go about 200 yards before running too low on pressure. I have considered various things such as fueling it with Mapp gas rather than propane or using a secondary tank to store pressurized steam. So far I haven't done either. To learn more about it go to: http://72.14.253.104/search?q=cache:lPuHIwwnQs4J:

In my area of Michigan there are two old engine type clubs that, while not necessarily train clubs, would view a scale locomotive as a worthy addition. Similar clubs that put on shows to the public likely exist in your neck of the woods.

I would contact train related orgs, old engine type clubs and ask them to take a look at your pride and joy and see now if they are willing to receive it later with whatever stipulations of care you wish to include. If you have some funds to provide an 'endowment' for your locomotives care that would be a plus since all these orgs are cash strapped.

You also might want to arrange a backup destination if the selected clubs ability to care for your locomotive changes over time. That one will be tough to enforce since, well, you know.

Wes

You don't want to store a reserve of pressurized steam, you want to store superheated water that can flash into steam on demand. 1 gallon of water = 3,000 gallons of steam - much more oomph for the cubic inch. (But you have to be careful how you restrain it, or it just increases the *BOOM* factor.) That, or for a flash boiler where you don't want a reserve you need to get the BTUH input into the boiler up. Might make it easier if you didn't try to hang it all off the front forks, leave room for a physically larger boiler.

You can get a 5-Lb. or 11-Lb. "camping size" Propane cylinder on a rear rack, and fabricate a larger feedwater saddle-tank and put it over the rear wheel. Won't look as pretty as the all-brass example you have now, but it will raise the functionality - and as a safety concern it gets the cylinder relief valve a decent distance downwind from the burner.

Then again, you could call Manchester Tank and see if you can get two or three of the 5-Lb steel Propane tanks copper plated...

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Very nice little locomotive, hope you can find someone who will appreciate it and care for it.

John

For a second I was marveling at the materials and work needed to build a 12" scale locomotive and how you got it into your living room!

Yes, I know you meant 1", but I know someone with a real 0-4-0 who, back in the 90's, steamed it up and ran it back and forth on several hundred feet of track on his property. I think it was a former saw mill switch engine.

Steve

Bruce, That's very good advice, I was at the Maker Faire in San Mateo several months ago and saw a steam tricycle built on that principle. The boiler consisted of a cylindrical housing with a coil of pipe from a steam cleaner heated by a propane burner and fed water by a pump. The coil discharges into a tank (Showen with wood insulation in the pictures)where it flashes into steam which goes to the engine. The water which does not boil is recycled to the coil by the pump.Wish I'd have thought of that idea.

On Fri, 29 Jun 2007 20:16:13 -0700, " snipped-for-privacy@aol.com"

I'd have to go look at one to be sure, but I believe the Stanley Brothers figured that one out (safe flash boilers) a long time ago. To be precise, roughly 110 years ago...

You have to leave the base design alone and scale it up a notch. Or take the Stanley prints and scale them down by 50% or so.

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Google "Ward Kimball", and this was a real narrow-gauge 0-4-0 in his 'backyard' (ex-orange grove) between 1950-ish and 1980-ish. His locomotive and cars collection ended up at the Orange Empire Railway Museum.

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