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

Basically, all those small Asian lathes are made at the same factory, sometimes to the specifications of a specific retailer be it good or bad.

Your best bet is to go on Youtube and watch the countless hours of machining videos and find someone who has a lathe whose size and features will do the things you wish to do and then purchase something similar.  Often times it's a bigger machine than you would first think.  I recommend getting the lathe first and learning how to run that correctly before purchasing a mill.  Also, do not underestimate the amount of tooling and metrology equipment you will need to purchase as it adds up quickly.  While a DRO on a mill is extremely handy, it's not such a big deal with such a small lathe where a mag-backed indicator will do much of what you need.

You can create entire model engines with just a lathe and drill press as people did that for decades before small mills became affordable.  I just read "Making Model Victorian Stationary Engines" from Stewart Hart and he presents 3 model engine builds using mostly the lathe and a pillar drill, although he is stretching it a bit with the 3rd model.