Office of Steam Forum for Model & Toy Steam Gas & Hot Air Engines

The rest of the story - This guy was a former member of St. Croix RR live steamers and showed up one day when I was there and said he had a 1" Little Engines Pacific to sell. I already had one, but had to at least check out his. His had been sitting for 20 years, pistons stuck. I was trying to avoid project stuff, so I passed on it, but he showed me his small collection of stationary engines that he had built from casting kits, which included this Cretors. We made a deal on those and I was happy.  6 months later I couldn't get his Pacific off of my mind so I went back to make an offer on it.  He agreed but said " I want my popcorn engine back, I regretted selling it the moment it went out the door"  I agreed, so he got the Cretors back, and I got the Pacific, which by the way, has been the flagship engine of my "fleet". This all happened several years ago. I recently went back through his area in central Wisconsin to look at a model T Speedster.  I did not get the Speedster, but did stop at my friend's house on the way home. His health is failing, and I bought a bunch of his machinist tools, and the Cretors was sitting there on his bench among a pile of stuff, I don't think it had been moved since I dropped it off years earlier.  I made him an offer, his eyes lit up, and we had a deal, win-win. Sometimes things work out, no Speedster (yet), but I got the Cretors back!