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

The first one should be a Stuart Mill engine S 50
Boiler is homemade - as the second engine - the
black one looks very old and is also unknown to me.
Very nice collection
Arnold

The reversing gear is different.  The lever has notches for forward and reverse and is connected to a rod that passes through the frame of the engine.  When you move the lever, the entire brass valve actuator assembly with the gears rotates about 70 degrees.

I have not tried to run them on air yet.  It is a little stiff.  These engines really were in a barn for who knows how many years.  The pictures are after I got some of the racoon shit off them.

Gene

Cleaned and oiled the black one up a bit.  Hooked it up to air to see if it would run.  It would not.  Worked on it some more.  Appears to not be timed correctly.  Turns out out it is a single action motor, only power on the down stroke.  The opposite end of the cylinder is open to air.  The slide valve only has two ports, one to power the top of the piston and the second is a bleed, allowing the pressure to bleed to the bottom of the piston and out the open end on the up stroke.  Seems unusual to me, but maybe not.

Gene

Played with the black one some more  My brother and I decided that the timing was way off so we loosened the set screw on one of the gears and set it up ourselves.  It is not great, but it runs in both directions on air.

As asked by Gil, I recorded a short video, but I am not sure how to load it.  To upload a file/picture is easy, but MP4 is is not one of the codex's supported by the website. 

I took two more pictures showing the gears in the forward and reverse positions.  The first picture, lever to the left, the engine will turn CW.  Pic two, lever to the right, is CCW. Note how much the slide valve moves just by moving the lever.

The piston has two ring groves, but no rings.  What are people using?  I assume it originally had cast iron rings.  I made up some brass ones but they get somewhat distorted fitting them to the piston.  Seem to work, but I am sure there are better alternatives.  I am convinced this was a working engine.  It is quite worn.  I think it has some hours on it.

Gene

You are on the right track.

Re videos... We cannot load them here.

Put them on YouTube and place the share link in your article.

They will automatically embed here.

Gil

Paula,

It does indeed say USA on the boiler with what appears to be a serial number.  I now have that one all cleaned up and the S50 runs great.  I have attached an "after" pic.

Still working on the black one.  Turns out it is not black, but a chocolate brown.  Not sure I like to color.  It may become black.  As I mentioned before, it is built very robust.  Huge babbitted main bearings.  The main connecting rod has complex bearing adjustments using wedges and screws at both ends.  The shaft of gear driven crank that drives the steam valve was so worn that I had to make a new one.  I also had to sleeve the hole that the shaft rotates in.  They look original and work fine.

There were no piston rings.  So I made a set from an old cast iron black pipe fitting.  They came out pretty nice.

Just wish I had more information about the engine.  It was definitely and working engine and I would love to know what it did.

I agree there used to be side covers on the fire box.  I may make some, but I like the look of the tubes.

I tried the burners using a propane torch tank.  Just took off the torch tip and slipped a rubber hose over the torch and onto the feed tube to the burners.  They have an orifice built in and really put out the heat.  Nice blue flame.  I have not run it on steam yet, but I am sure it would heat up fast.

Gene