Taking Home The Castings For The 6 Inch Scale Little Samson Traction Engine Model
20 April 2014 – The Little Samson Traction Engine Project Has Started
Today (Easter Sunday 2014) I collected the castings for the half-size Little Samson Traction Engine from Little Samson Models down in Cambridge and took them back to our house in Nottingham where I am busy packing up my model engineering workshop to send to our retirement home in Thailand.
Here are some photos of the castings in my Ford Fiesta ST car.
Note: To see full-size images click the
button above.
See how heavily loaded the Ford Fiesta car is in the picture above.
Normally that car does around 40 mpg. On the drive home it only managed 35 mpg. All that extra petrol went into heating up the rear tires through friction! The rear tires were red hot when we got home.
Alan,
It’s a good thing you are not building a full size traction engine then……
Fantastic project. Years of challenging fun ahead. When finished, I am sure it will be the only one in Thailand.
Good luck with Thai customs.
Best wishes
Ian.
Hi Ian and thanks for your comment.
Yes challenging times ahead not the least of which – as you refer to- is getting all that lot through the Thai Customs in Bangkok.
As I said in a reply below how can I convince them that the steam coal in those bags has already been used?
Best Regards
Alan Brown
Hi Alan
Very Interesting photos. It would be interesting to see all the castings laid out in one shot when you get back to Thailand. As you say a very committed act. You have my best wishes for a happy retirement. Have you had any ideas about the boiler construction? Or about lifting of large bits of metal safely on your own?
I am still slowly working away on the beam engine. But as always there is always some thing else to fix. To day it was burnt cables in the old house, Two trees to cut back and a load of new bushes to plant. And after all that the start capacitor on the milling machine decided to blow. Not the first time so I had a spare. Must be the high amb temp here.
As I mentioned in an earlier mail might be a good idea to ship a bucket full of steam oil over in the container if there are no safety problems. That is if the traction engine uses the stuff. I still have not found a supplier here.
Best of luck with the shipping
Regards George
Thanks for the comment George – always good to hear from you.
I do have some photos of the castings laid out in the garden at our house in Nottingham (UK). I’ll upload them to the website as soon as I get a minute. Getting that lot back to Thailand and past the Customs in BKK is not going to be easy to say the least.
As to commitment I was committed to building this half sized traction engine the moment I bought those big machine tools in Bangkok.
The boiler I’ll get made in UK. When I have built the 6 inch scale Little Samson Traction Engine and played with it enough I plan to ship it back to UK to sell. In order to sell an engine like that in the UK the boiler must have been built to the correct Standards and have the CE stamp. All the boiler steel has to be certified and welding undertaken by a coded welder. So it’s got to be built in the UK.
I’ll be getting quotations for that work soon. I expect the manufacture of the boiler to take about 9 months from commencement.
As you say something always gets in the way of our hobby of making model engines. For me at the moment is this damned packing and shipping the workshop over to Thailand. I have just put back the collection date by a week because we won’t be ready on time.
Good tip about the steam oil. Should ship a few sacks of steam coal too. How do I convince the Thai Customs that the steam coal is used – you are only allowed to import used items free of duty!
It’ll be a long time before I need steam oil for the Traction Engine but not quite so long before I need it for the Stuart Turner Victoria Mill engine.
Best Regards
Alan Brown