Live Steam locos

Kaleb

Narrow gauge enthusiast
I put this thread up for people to discuss anything about live steam locos. :D If you are wondering, I don't have any live steam locos yet.
 
http://www.livesteamlocomotives.com/

A very good site with a place to start, they offer kits and Drawings( For people with the skills and tools)

I've all ways wanted to get one, but there is no point, yard is too small to do anything with and the local club meets only 1 time a month :(

Well that and the cost :eek:


Zintac
 
hi Kaleb

Live steam is very expensive and time consuming, but one or 2 Trainzers do have some live steam locos, so keep an eye on this forum and they may turn up for you to see.

I think GreyWolfRetired has a real 5" scale 9F if my memory serves me well
 
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hi Kaleb

Live steam is very expensive and time consuming, but one or 2 Trainzers do have some live steam locos, so keep an eye on this forum and they may turn up for you to see.

I think GreyWolfRetired has a real 5" scale 9F if my memory serves me well

Hi Kaleb

Paul is right on the second part, they can take a lot of time to build (my 2-8-0 took 4 1/2 years to get to the running stage, plus another couple of years finishing it off (well to a point). They also need regular maintenance.

If you build it yourself, the locos themselves aren't that expensive. I think when I added up the cost of the castings, and having a certified pressure vessel welder put my steel boiler together, I came out a shade over $500.00, about the same as a HO plastic steamer (with sound ;) ).

Machinery to build it is another story. I was lucky, belonging to a club with a couple of sympathetic members who let me use their lathes and milling machines, but when I ended up with my own machinery, there was little change out of a few thousand. That being said, I can now make as many locos as I want or have the time to do, and there are a few on the list.

Great idea for a thread though, and hopefully others post about their live steam experiences.

Cheers
Tony
 
I still have my O-gauge live steam loco by Mamod. It is a narrow gauge type loco that used to run on a railway me and my dad constructed in the garden. Even after conversion to a meths-fired loco, it wasn't particularly powerful, and could just about pull one carriage over a dead flat railway.

Anyone else have these steam 'toys'? I also have the Mamod Traction Engine and a 50-year old stationary steam engine.

Best wishes,
Padster
 
I don't actually have any live steam locomotives that I can run over a line, but I have a basement full of stationary Wilesco machines:hehe:

WileeCoyote:D
 
I found the pic of the 9F live steam model, you can judge the size by Trainz enthusiast holding it.

9F_Scale.jpg


Its the best model I have seen
 
I still have my O-gauge live steam loco by Mamod. It is a narrow gauge type loco that used to run on a railway me and my dad constructed in the garden. Even after conversion to a meths-fired loco, it wasn't particularly powerful, and could just about pull one carriage over a dead flat railway.

Anyone else have these steam 'toys'? I also have the Mamod Traction Engine and a 50-year old stationary steam engine.

Best wishes,
Padster

I have two of these. One is a horizontal boiler Meccano Steam Engine that was purchased at a swap meet in a quite bad condition, the crank, flywheel and most of the con rod were missing along with the boiler plug (not the safety valve.) and burner, and the piston was seized up in the cylinder, but now after freeing the piston and replacing the missing parts with improvised ones made from bits and pieces around the house it runs like a dream. The other one is an older Mamod stationary engine which I got for my birthday which was in full working order when we got it. The Meccano engine has been combined with some of my other Meccano to make a basic traction engine, which has been very successful, it has also been tried as a geared locomotive, twice. The first time the engine hardly moved at all. The second time after changing the design, success! It trundled slowly along the circular track. Both are fired on solid fuel tablets, but when we first fired up the Meccano steam engine, we were using gas in the form of an LPG torch. We then used candles and then metho (metylated spirits) and now, solid fuel tablets.

Padster, About your loco, why not fire it on solid fuel tablets? They work very well in my engines.
 
http://www.livesteamlocomotives.com/

A very good site with a place to start, they offer kits and Drawings( For people with the skills and tools)

I've all ways wanted to get one, but there is no point, yard is too small to do anything with and the local club meets only 1 time a month :(

Well that and the cost :eek:


Zintac
Do you have room in your house for an HO layout?
The smallest live steam I've seen is HO scale. It uses DCC control and an electric heating element that runs off of track voltage. I saw the ad in Model Railroader, but I don't know what they cost.

:cool: Claude
 
We always had trouble with the solid fuel blocks, Kaleb. They seemed to take ages to heat up the boiler and often the fire went out. Using meths was better, though despite all our efforts the 0-4-0 always struggled and in the end the railway was ripped up, which was a shame as it was a nice feature in the garden.

Best wishes,
Padster
 
I have a 0-6-0 "Lady Ann" in G-gauge but no longer have the garden railroad to run it on. Live steam inside is a bad idea.
 
A company named "Little Engines" in New Jersey used to advertise parts and castings for LS locos up to a 4-8-4 in 1-1/2 inch scale in Model Railroader Magazine. Haven't seen them in years tho (sniff). A friend of mine (many) years ago built a small model of a quadruple-expansion stationary steam engine (took 2 years in 1/2 inch scale). Used to be several sources of parts-n-plans In England (where he got his).

Great hobby if you have the time, room, knowledge, and coin of the realm.

Ben
 
We always had trouble with the solid fuel blocks, Kaleb. They seemed to take ages to heat up the boiler and often the fire went out. Using meths was better, though despite all our efforts the 0-4-0 always struggled and in the end the railway was ripped up, which was a shame as it was a nice feature in the garden.

Best wishes,
Padster

Maybe you have something leaking most of the steam that is produced by the boiler.
 
I've always wanted to put in a live steam railway on our property. We have two ponies and I think it would be cool to ferry hay and feed back and forth with the train. To bad the distance is short and it is very exspensive.
 
I have plans to build live steam locos and my own railway to run them on. It will be called the West Tamworth Heights Steam Railway. It will have gauges from 45mm to 5". Construction will start as soon as we have the money to buy a loco kit and some rolling stock as well as track. At first, we will only have 45mm tracks. As time goes on, we will lay more track of broader gauges and buy and/or build more locos and rolling stock.
 
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I've begun building a OO gauge live steam line to run some of the Hornby stock on. They've hinted that they're making some freight locomotives soon, possibly a 9F. (given that their "testbed" for live steamers holds up to a 2-10-0...)
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Kaleb I would suggest purchasing a simple locomotive construction series from a magazine such as "Australia Model Engineering Magazine".
They have a fair few construction series which tell you the instructions on how to build loco's and or carriages etc...]

The website is here: http://www.ameng.com.au/

Another good book is on this page: http://www.ameng.com.au/retail-books2.htm

Its called "Steam Trains...In YOUR Garden", it features how to make a 5" steam loco and a few carriages from memory.

Not only does building your own give you more pride in your work and a better knowledge of how it works but it is usually cheaper to and it is all practice in the end!

Tom
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