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

Not entirely sure what Jan (classix) may have been referencing, but I do recall that there was a method to prevent a single cylinder engine from coming to a stop at top or bottom dead center, thus giving it a chance, but only a chance, of being able to self-start, if not acting against too much resistance. I'll look through my old references and see if I can find anything on it.

Just thinking about it now however, it seems that it would need to be a double acting single cylinder engine to have much chance of actually working in practice.