Good Morning, doe's anyone know of any paddle boat kits that are available for a live steam plant, ideal size for me would be around 36".
Thank you
Mike

In August I got an old big steamengine model in parts. Bore and stroke are 45 x 75 mm, weight of the parts was almost 29 kg. All parts were cleaned, worked up and assembled. Fortunately no parts were missed, all seems complete. Probably the engine was made in 1907 by a person named "W. EGGERS" - this was engraved at the slide box. It was interesting and joyful to complete this engine in several weeks. The old wooden foundation of the engine completely was destroyed by wood-worms - I made a new foundation of beechwood.
Last week I made several testruns of the finished engine - after minor improvements she was running well. My boiler isn`t strong enough to produce steam for longer runs than 10 minutes, but this is sufficient to watch the nearly noiseless movement without any leaking of steam and water. May the pictures speak for herself!

Thomas

I measured a distance of 20 m at the shore. At full steam the boat reaches a little more than 2 m per second, this is about 7,2 km/h or 3,9 nautical miles. This seems not so much, compared with my electric driven speedboat model "Baby Bootlegger", a historic runabout of 1924.

But "Argo" has a displacement hull with power of steamengine of perhaps 40 watt.

The brushless electric motor of "B.B." has power of 700 watt, speed can reach 37 km/h.

Thomas

That last model is very pretty.
Thanks for the photos
Jon

You have built a very elegant boat. How is the speed under full steam?

Beautiful models!

Great work,

I did like the use of the rocket cylinders on the paddleboat engine. Nice to see the boat on the water.

Jon

The oscillating engine wasn`t a piece of good engineering. In opposition of the slide valve engines from Microcosm, this engine failed with leakings and low power. There must bei some failures happened with completition of the engine in chinese factory.

But I got an defect Rocket Loco for a low price. The boiler was complete unusable, but this doesn`t matter - I only needed the cylinders with piston, piston rods and slide valves to make an new slide valve engine fot the "COURIER" boat.
I new piston valve geared engine was arised - with an old Wilesco reverse valve and nearly no leaks of steam. Some pictures will illustrate the process. Not before now the "COURIER" steamboat is real functionable.

At the top of the paddleboxes I made 10 mm boreholes to avoide the tendence of list. Now the boat got much more nautical stability - it`s possible to present her driving at the big steam meeting in Friedrichshafen, Lake Constance in the beginning of november.

What`s the quintessence: In some cases it takes much more time than one expect to reach the goal - a really functionable model steamboat!

Thomas

has anyone used a MFA Torpedo 500 motor with gear box to turn paddles and if so are there any recomended battery capacity that can be suggested to an aged steam man? I just purchased Old Glory off eBay but no batteries included and being steam orientated electrickery is a bit of a mystery to me so any help gratefully received and read. John.

I was thinking of doing the same with the engine, invert it to drive paddlewheels, I'd be interested to learn if you have issues with condensation pooling in the cylinders. Which is the reason I've been putting off starting to build it.

The engine looks very nice by the way.
Jon