running live steam in smaller scales

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

Around 1950 MR had a series of articles about a man (I think his name was Emil Vollander) who built O gauge steam engines that ran on CO2. He put a tank in the tender and a rubber tube to the engine. He also improvised the power to reverse the reversing gear and then open the valve from the tank which he charged with dry ice. Eack engine would run for two to three hours continuously before needing to be recarged. It seems to me that in this day and age using a decoder to run the reverse gear and another function to control the power to the control valve that it could make operating a steam engine pretty realistic. Any thoughts?

2

Been done. You can buy live steam in HO. I believe it was Hornby. More of a gimik than a feature.

David B

3

I read that article, pretty neat idea. I recall someone made an N scale live steamer (custom made one) although neat, I cant reccomend it seriously. If I wanna live steam it, I’ll hit the larger scales.

4

Reference the O-scale dry ice loco, I recall that one of the issues was that the outsides of the cylinders and stack would ice up (condensing the water out of the air.) Not the most realistic of all possible scenarios!

A “hot” live steamer, even operating at very modest pressure, offers some real challenges:

  • How do you cram a decoder, a couple of servos, working boiler and exhaust system into the space the prototype allocates for the boiler alone?
  • Anything solid state is a poor neighbor to anything hot and, potentially, wet.
  • Even saturated steam at the lowest practical pressure would be a burn hazard.
  • The fire, if not electrically heated, would be a fire hazard - and the flame from an alcohol fire is effectively invisible!
  • Not much weight available for traction.
  • There’s a bit more than simple forward and reverse to reciprocating steam operation. Precise, prototypical control would require some MAJOR engineering.
  • Etc, etc, et al, ad nauseam…

Micro-model live steam strikes me as one of those, “It’s not impossible, but it is wildly impractical,” propositions. (It would be easy to sink the price of a new pickup truck into the equivalent of a Bachmann steamer - and the Bachmann would almost certainly look, pull and run better.)

Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with motor-driven steam)