Tag Archives: model steam engine

The steam engine

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Wilesco steamengine

The following piece is about 40 years old model steam engine from the manufacturer Wilesco. (Thanks to Manfred for the loan for the media preparation). The model consists of a highly polished and nickel-plated brass kettle, which is built into an old copper-colored boiler house with brick pattern. Heating is done with a dry spirit burner located under the boiler. The pressure vessel has a spring safety valve and a “Domdampfpfeife”. The pressure line is led to a single-acting pendulum cylinder, which in turn drives the crank and the flywheel on it via a connecting rod.Trockenspiritusbrenner.

IMAG0064The entire model is mounted on an iron plate. In order to be able to drive mechanical models with the machine, a pulley is mounted on the shaft of the flywheel. Since the model has been stored in a carton for the past forty years, a few small jobs have been done. Piston and crank were stiff and had to be cleaned and re-oiled. The crank was a bit out of alignment with the flywheel shaft.

IMAG0057The seals of the “Domdampfpfeife” and the pressure relief valve were also brittle and hardened and were replaced. Here I was able to use a suitable punching tool made of “new” old gasket material to knock out and insert two new gaskets. Now the model was a little bit freed from the dust of the last years and cleaned and a start attempt was nothing in the way.

Now the spirit burner could be filled with a small piece of dry spirit, which was probably even older than the machine itself. At least the original box looks like this:

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