Looking for Tips & Techniques to Build Steam Engines

[FlyerNut]

Hi everyone,

I enjoy looking at all the MOC's people are making, but I'd love to get some tips from their makers.

It'd be nice to see some building phase pictures to get an idea of what bricks are used to create certain effects, e.g. steam engine builds.

I'm a novice, so any help would be appreciated.

[peterab]

It's pretty hard to give general tips on steam engine building because the solutions differ greatly depending on the wheel arrangement. Once you've worked out how your wheels will work, that will influence pretty much everything else, so get your wheels and drive train worked out first.

For ideas I'd look at as many other AFOL builds as you feel necessary, and copy the techniques you like. There are hundreds of steamers in the Flickr lego train Mocs group, most builders show enough detail shots in their stream to work out what they've done. That skill improves the more you do it, so try and copy bits you like in real brick.

It might also be helpful to build from others instructions. Ben's BR23 is available as a free download on Railbricks as is a wild west train from gambort, and Sava sells instructions for some of his steamers.

After that it's a matter of trial and error for the most part.

[Frank STENGEL]

It's pretty hard to give general tips on steam engine building because the solutions differ greatly depending on the wheel arrangement. Once you've worked out how your wheels will work, that will influence pretty much everything else, so get your wheels and drive train worked out first.

I second that advice. Steamers are basically in two parts: bottom (chassis, wheels, rods and pistons) and top (boiler, cabin etc.). Each part has its own challenges.

For the wheel chassis side you have to pay attention to curve handling. That can be rather difficult when the piston/cylinder interfere with mobile front wheel arrangements. E.g. in a 4-x-x you often have one wheel pair before and one wheel pair after the cylinders. One trick is to have only the front pair mobile while the second pair is fixed (with respect to the chassis), another (which complicates the rod mechanisms) is to build the cylinders on the front truck rather than the chassis...

For the superstructure, unless you build a push along engine (or one using a motorised tender) you are in for another challenge: how to cram (hide!) motor(s), receiver and battery inside the boiler and cabin.

Searching on brickshelf using "steam" as a keyword results in tons of ideas and LDraw files...

Edited June 26, 2012 by Frank STENGEL

[harnbak]

A few tips (& custom wheels) can be found here http://bigbenbricks.com/applications.html

[Rail Co]

I have done one or two steam engines. Anyway first of all make it your own don't copy everything you see from another person's model. Also remember it won't come out the best the first time. I'm still figuring out how to finish my Flying Scotsman. I have had to change things around many times just to fit things in correctly or to this or that . Anyway and look for some odd pieces that could add the cherry on top to the train, I have seen a minifig arm on a train before .

There are not really any particular ways to make one just kind of go for it and have fun!

Rail Co

[Duq]

For some inspiration Flickr is your friend. Have a look at various models and then, as has been said above, do it your own way.

To get you started here are two of my favourites. First Teddy's BR01 with the most ingenious hinging undercarriage I've seen:

Slide11 by Johan_vd_Heuvel (Teddy), on Flickr

Second is Holger Mathes' brilliantly compact BR80:

BR-80_Power-Function-Steamer_7 by holgermatthes, on Flickr

Edited June 26, 2012 by Duq

[rday1982]

Hi everyone,

I enjoy looking at all the MOC's people are making, but I'd love to get some tips from their makers.

It'd be nice to see some building phase pictures to get an idea of what bricks are used to create certain effects, e.g. steam engine builds.

I'm a novice, so any help would be appreciated.

I'm working on a couple of steam locos at the moment. Just finished refining the valve gear design for an Olton Hall (Hogwarts Express) I'm building in LDD (waiting for the parts to turn it into a reality). Currently struggling with the chassis and wheel arrangement for a Pannier Tank.

Even in LDD, there's something very satisfying about putting together a steam locomotive. My current design is something I'm very pleased with.

There's a lot of detail missing, as I built the digital version just to test the valve gear design, and so it's a fairly crude model compared to the actual plastic one so far (which is sitting on the tracks minus the front four wheels on that articulated truck and the steam cylinders on the side. They're the bits I still need to get the parts to build properly).

Here it is:

I might post a picture once I've got it finished, but that could be a while. Parts are expensive and I'm broke.

[FlyerNut]

Thanks everyone, I look forward to using all this new-found info to build!

[SavaTheAggie]

The best tip I can give is to build a steam engine.

Experience through trial and error is the best teacher when building steam engines. Heck, I've gone back and rebuilt many of my steam engines two, three, some five times. I either find a better solution or just want to add more detail.

--Tony