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[wideawake]

Hi all

This is the engine I referred to on the TVR1A thread.   I will be interested in thoughts on who manufactured it.   Apart from the info I gave on the other thread, the main thin of note is that in many places where I would have expected proper screws and nuts or similar, the fixings are peened over bits of rod.

[AlexC]

Hi Wideawake,

Your engine appears to be built from a design by 'SteaMECH' of NZ. http://steamech.com

Very nicely built engine.

This was sold as a plan set originally, however, of late they are also producing some of the valve gear components as a set of laser cut parts.
It has Stephenson reversing gear, NOT Hackworth as you suggested in the other post.

The Graham TVR1 is fitted with Hackworth gear.

Yours appears to have been built using bronze eccentric straps, wherease the latest offerings are in steel.

Hope this is of some help.

Best regards.

AlexC.

[kno3]

Cool, I didn't know about this steam engine company from New Zealand.

[wideawake]

Hi Wideawake,

Your engine appears to be built from a design by 'SteaMECH' of NZ. http://steamech.com

Very nicely built engine.

This was sold as a plan set originally, however, of late they are also producing some of the valve gear components as a set of laser cut parts.
It has Stephenson reversing gear, NOT Hackworth as you suggested in the other post.

The Graham TVR1 is fitted with Hackworth gear.

Yours appears to have been built using bronze eccentric straps, wherease the latest offerings are in steel.

Hope this is of some help.

Best regards.

AlexC.

Hi Alex

Thanks for  that.  I've not come across that maker/designer before.   Thanks also for putting me right on the valve gear.   I'm not sure where I got the idea it was Hackworth from.   Yes I'm quite pleased with it, given what I paid.    It doesn't aspire to be a Proteus which is what I really wanted.   As I say, the only problem is that stripping it would be a pain as it's put together with peened over brass rod rather than nutted fixings.   Hopefully I'll not need to do that, at least for a while.Cheers

Guy

[bogstandard]

I bought a set of the steel laser cut parts from Steamech. He doesn't have them in all the time, I waited about six months before he contacted me to tell me he had them in again. The quality of the parts are very good, but they were a little rusty by the time they got here from the other side of the world. The plans take some getting used to, a bit of a mixture of imp/metric in places, but easy enough to follow if you are careful.



Wideawake, don't worry too much over the 'peened over bits of rod'. It is a standard method of using a bifurcated end to a rod which once formed, gives a nice, play free swivel without the worry of bolts tightening or undoing. If I was doing it, I would have put a washer under the formed head.

I will make it up one day, when I have a few more own design engines out of my system.

John

[bogstandard]

Guy,

I have just had a look at the plans, and the area you show as being peened over is in fact to make a rigid unit. The end of the rod and hole is in fact D-shaped, and needs to be fixed that way.

If you look very carefully on the above pic, you can just make out the shaped hole. It shows it better on the site pictures.

Just a little note, they did hit me rather heavily for import duty, and it didn't make it any easier by the time Royal Mail added their £8 worth. At least Dick Turpin wore a mask, Royal Mail do it in open view.


John

[boatmadman]

I also have a set of steamech laser cut parts stashed away for future project.

[MONAHAN STEAM MODELS]

This is definitely Steamech's engine design.

However I discovered some months ago that there was a Chinese company who knocked off their design, part for part and was trying to find distributors at the last annual Toy Fair in Germany. I contacted the owner of Steamech and brought this to his attention. I gave him the companies contact info and I know he tried contacting the fellow who was responsible for all of this but I haven't followed up with him to see if he had any luck stopping the company from producing his engine.  The Chinese knock off was made completely from brass where as some of Steamech's part are laser cut from steel as already mentioned earlier in this post. I originally posted a warning about this on the forum a few months ago. Here is a link to the topic: http://www.modelboatmayhem.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=9752.msg90528#msg90528   

Your engine could very well be a one off that someone made from Steamech's plans.

These are some of the initial photo's of the knocked off engines from the Chinese manufacturer below.

Nick

[wideawake]

I hope that I haven't inadvertently bought a rip-off engine!!   I don't think so as the links at least appear to be steel.   Whether it's built from plans or bought ready made I don't know.   I definitely bought it from an individual (as far as one can tell on ebay) in the UK not an ebay shop.  In actual fact, though I describe it as my ebay engine, it failed to meet it's reserve on ebay and I bought it later in a private deal.  The seller didn't seem to know much about it AFAIR.   In truth I'd much rather have had one of your engines Nick, but the finances wouldn't stretch that far.   I'd already gone after a couple of Proteus units on ebay and chickened out of paying what they were probably worth so not got either.

Cheers

Guy

[MONAHAN STEAM MODELS]

Hi Guy,

I don't suspect your engine is one of the knock offs. Your engine looks to be of a higher quality than the knock offs are and it does incorporate the use of some of the steel bits.

I merely saw the opportunity to warn members on this forum of the knock offs that are floating around out there. I am sure Steamech as well as any other manufacturer has put a lot of time and resources into developing their engines so it bothered me when I saw somebody coping their design without their consent.

The Proteus engines produced by Cheddar Models are high quality engines as was all of their products. They don't show up on Ebay very often so if you can, you have to grab them when possible! Of coarse if the finances or the Miss's allows! They won't go down in value. You can always resell them if you decide you don't need them and would like to give a fellow modeler a crack at owning one.

Cheers,

Nick   

[wideawake]

I certainly hope it's not a Chinese copy!  You're so right about the original designer being the one who should reap the benefits.    I'm glad you raised the issue of the copies.  I agree about the Proteus.  As I said, I regret not going all out to get one of the two which came up.  I still have an autosearch on ebay in case another one shows.  However I really do think that your twin is an excellent alternative (shame about the £/$ rate ATM!    )

I do have a second Gemini tucked away for a future project.

Cheers

Guy

[Bee]

Interesting engine. Pity that as mentioned there are difficulties in supply of the parts. I guess if this is its first mention on a major worldwide site like Mayhem their publicity has not been enough to generate the production flow. As it is a drawing and some parts set it is more in the model engineering frame so not really competition to the suppliers already known on this site.
At some ME shows there has been a stand selling a range of laser cut frames and parts for railway engines from G1 to 7in. I wonder if they could arrange a tie up to make the parts here to avoid shipping hassle, just so long as they don't turn the $ price straight into pounds.

[logoman]

Guy, I think your ebay/Steamech engine is a much more attractive than the Proteus IMHO.
I really look forward to seeing that engine put to work.

[wideawake]

Guy, I think your ebay/Steamech engine is a much more attractive than the Proteus IMHO.
I really look forward to seeing that engine put to work.

You may well be right.  However it looks and feels flimsy compared with the Proteus, or John Bertinat's Borderer and Marcher which would be possible "build from castings and plans" options.   The steamech is destined for my Wideawake launch.  Hopefully in the water by the spring.

Cheers

Guy

[bogstandard]

Bee,

As you said about publicity.

I actually raised this engine on an engineering site a fair while ago, and didn't think about here because it is really for model engineers to build, and it is a rather large engine at 1/2" bore for the normal sized model boats.

In the future, I will bring anything like this that I find, to the attention of modellers on here.

Nick,

I used to build the stands for the company I worked for at Nurnberg Toy Fair, so I got to wander around every day that it was open, and I was amazed at what the far eastern chappies in their little cubicles were selling. You could buy rip offs of almost anything that was on the market. I was offered fast electric Monteleone speedboat rip offs for £16 each (inc shipping), if I bought a minimum of 12. The real ones retailed here for well over £100 each. It was the same for fast electric cars and model I.C. engines. I also got some great bargains as they were packing up to leave, they didn't want to carry their samples all the way home with them. The then Eastern block countries didn't mind a bit of Sterling either. For £10 you could get a real nice boat kit, but the instructions were usually in cyrillic.
That is one show you should visit sometime in your life, just to see what is available in the market place, as we only see at most 1% of what is on show there.

John

[MONAHAN STEAM MODELS]

Hi Guy,

Thank you kindly for your compliments on our Twin.

I agree that the current currency exchange rates are an unfortunate mess right now. However it's a good time for modelers living in the U.S. to be buying products produced in the U.K. right now. Hopefully this will begin to happen with a greater frequency than seen in the recent past and maybe hopefully help out the U.K. manufacturers and retailers a bit. Our dollar was worth less than half that of the pound for some time so a lot of the remarkable kits produced in the U.K. were just out of the financial reach of most enthusiasts. We really haven't seen the effects of the economy in our business. Why this is, I really don't know. In fact we are currently sold out of almost everything we had in stock so we a scrambling to get inventory levels back up to normal. I wish we could get the price of our Heron steam plants down but they are a literally a horrible nightmare to produce and there is barely any profit in them as it is currently. We don't want to kill off the Herons either because everybody wants one, so I guess we are stuck with things the way they are?

Congratulations on your new engine it will defiantly look the part in your new model. Please post some pictures when you get a chance.


Bee,

Interesting engine. Pity that as mentioned there are difficulties in supply of the parts. I guess if this is its first mention on a major worldwide site like Mayhem their publicity has not been enough to generate the production flow. As it is a drawing and some parts set it is more in the model engineering frame so not really competition to the suppliers already known on this site.
At some ME shows there has been a stand selling a range of laser cut frames and parts for railway engines from G1 to 7in. I wonder if they could arrange a tie up to make the parts here to avoid shipping hassle, just so long as they don't turn the $ price straight into pounds.

I agree with you that this is an interesting engine and makes for a beautiful model when completed.

Speaking as a manufacturer, I don't view other steam engine manufacturers as competition but more like partners in crime or something like that. We are all just doing what we like to do. Speaking as a collector, I feel most engine collectors want diversity in their collection too. Not Everything has to be from the same manufacturer every time. Most peoples engine collections will reflect this. In fact I actually quite happily recommend fellow steam enthusiasts and our customers alike to other manufacturers frequently if I feel their product better suits their needs. If somebody does want to buy our particular products then they have already thought about it, decided and they probably will. I actually still collect engines too. It's all part of the sick addiction we call the steam hobby. Some of us just take it a little too far and start companies producing these things. 


John,

I am waiting patiently to see what your next project might be. Any hints? The twin cylinder piston valve engine was a great build thread as was the single cylinder mill engine.

That's neat that you have been to the Nurnberg Toy Fair. I wanted to go last year but couldn't make it myself. It doesn't look like I will this year either. There's just too much going on and I can't break away from it all. I can't believe just how big that event is though. I heard it takes three days of sprinting through all of the halls just to say you've been in everyone of them. The Toy Fair website shows a map of the layout. It's too bad it is not open to the public. You have to be a manufacturer and you have to know someone in order just to register to show something. Last year well know companies that wanted to show there were being turned away.

It would be nice to visit U.K. someday. I've never been. I would love to just check out some of the M.E. shows and model boat shows just as a spectator. The turn out and quality of models always looks impressive.

Cheers,

Nick

[bogstandard]

Nick,

Getting way off topic here, but next engine build is the lads on Paddleducks want a few horizontals for their paddlers. I don't know when, as ill health has hit me hard the last few months and it is a slow recovery. Maybe a January start.

I used to get a full week at the fair, and never managed to get to see everything. It was a bit annoying on say the stand for Graupner, to get into the inner sanctum of the stand, it was by invite only, for large customers only. Every time you left the fair, the taxi drivers would pester you for your passes, I think they had a bit of a black market thing going. As far as I know, there is still one day for public viewing, towards the end of the fair, but in one day, you would be able to see nothing hardly of what was on offer. I used to keep away on that day, because it was so packed, you had to go with the hoards and you just couldn't get to see anything. I did about seven shows altogether, and it was a modellers dream come true.

John

[Bernhard]

hi..Wideawake,,,,,nice enginen you got there,,,,,,
will you post some photos of your steam launch here,,,,,,
regards Bernhard

[wideawake]

Hi Bernhard

Thanks.   I'll certainly post progress reports once I get a bit more done.   ATM I neeed to sort out a brass bedplate fore the boiler, engine etc before doing much else. I think it'll be after Christmas before much happens.

One pic of Wideawake for now:

[kno3]

Wow, looks very nice. Did you build the hull?

[wideawake]

Wow, looks very nice. Did you build the hull?

'fraid not.  I've wanted one ever since the buld articles were published back in 197?? but never got round to doing anything about it.  This one came up on ebay a year or so ago and I decided to go for it.  To be honest I don't think I wouldever have got round to building it myself.  It's all copper nailed and roved just like full size.   The MB plan didn't have the canopy and I'll probably not use that.

Cheers

Guy

[Tester]

Another steam engine on ebay here

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/2-Cylinder-Steam-Engine_W0QQitemZ130274286940QQihZ003QQcategoryZ140971QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

[bogstandard]

Tester,

That is one of the saddest versions of that engine I have seen in a long time.

It was designed for a boat called either Miranda or Victoria and was a free plan in I think Model Boats many years ago.

Once I get into my workshop, I can tell you exactly what engine it is. But I do know the one I built will easily power a 50" slim launch, and the matching boiler was a very easy build, but still efficient enough to keep the engine running for well over 30 mins.

John

[Bernhard]

hi....thats a great boat you got there  wideawake and a fine size to ..i rember it from ebay,,,,,,,,,hope to se more photos of it sun,,,and the engine you have ,will be just the right size ,,so the launch will look real.........what boiler do you have in mind fore it,,,,,,,,,,,
regards Bernhard

[wideawake]

Hi Bernhard

I have a Maccsteam 4 inch horizontal ready and waiting.    Possibly a bit bigger than needed but better safe than sorry!    I bought it when i thought I might put a a Stuart D10 in the boat.  Thta's what the original had.  I've got the casting set but no time to machine it ATM, hence the "ebay engine".

Cheers

Guy