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

Howdy John ... and Welcome to the Forum from the Eastern Sierra!

I really don't believe that I've ever seen an engine quite like that before, and I'm having real trouble trying to picture how the valving works with that set-up. It does look like it might be crankshaft ported to feed air/steam to the cylinder, and possibly even has the pistons pushed from the crank out instead of from the cylinder head in, which is backwards from normal. But again, I haven't a clue actually, so I'd want a look inside to see what is what!

Having it run on air is a good indicator, but experience shows that is no guarantee that it will also run on steam. Were it mine, I'd be tearing it down so I could get inside and see how it is supposed to work.

Meanwhile, we'll hope more experienced steamers will come along to clarify and edify this for us. We do have plenty of deep experience on board here.