Wilesco steam engines

[d-jones]

My dad has one of these little steam engines.

When I was a kid my brothers and I would sometimes pester him to fire it up so we could watch it go. It was fueled by little blocks of some type of solid fuel made by a company called Esbit, and each of us wanted to be the one to light it off and slide the little tray under the boiler. The same type of fuel is still used to heat some types of small personal camping stoves. Back during WWII every German soldier was running around with one of them in his gear. Now seventy years later both the Esbit stove and fuel are still available, nearly identical to their 1940's counterparts.

 

[kb0nes]

Ryan,

So glad you were able to successfully get the new adapter soldered into your boiler so your engine can live on. I had one of these models when I was young too, I still recall the slight odor of the fuel tablets burning.

A few years ago I was doing some amateur radio events that were competitive and there were some bonus points awarded for using alternative power from non-conventional sources. Working in a machine shop I thought it would be cool to build a steam engine and drive a motorcycle alternator with it. Its still on the to-do list but a long ways down unfortunately. There is a company called PM Research that sells kits to build the engine, and while some machining is needed that is pretty straight forward. Its the boiler design and construction that would be more time consuming, I planed to fuel with charcoal.

Here is a video of an the same engine I considered on Youtube



This particular engine should do about 1/4hp at full chat!

 

[tolivac]

On these engines makes sense that the little ones run faster.Like the PM Research demo.In some books I have about older amusement parks-back in the days when they ran on steam power.A central boiler or steam traction engine provided the steam for the park rides.Each had its own steam engine to turn it.Band organs had a small steam engine like that PM research one to run them.Later as the parks became electrified-the steam engines were replaced with electric motors.Certainly would make it easier and safer for park personnell and patrons.But the steam engines just have their "charm" about them.The steam engine set used in the PM demo just may be useful today with its small generator-could use it to power radio gear and electronic gear or charge batteries.Its a novel steam powered genset.And now understand how these are lubed.On the really large engines they used to run at the Smithsonian in Wash DC-they ran them from compressed air-had to use two 100 Hp air compressors to power the engines.The lube point on the engines had large oil cups that contained oil.

 

[toploader55]

Now...

This is a Work of Art.

I think a member posted this here a few years ago or someone sent this to me, but here is a real working Steam Engine in California.

How cool is this ? No computer programming here.

I will try to get pics of my Wilesco today.