Building The 3/4″ Scale Bassett Lowke Burrell Traction Engine Model

Having just finished the refurbishment of my 6″ scale Little Samson Traction Engine (Showmans’ Conversion) I’m straight away off building another traction engine model, a 3/4″ Scale Burrell Traction from designs published by Bassett Lowke in the 1950s.

As a young teenage boy back in the 50’s I used to read the Model Engineer magazine where the adverts for this model appeared and look at the ads with envy as we (my father and myself) had neither the money to buy the parts nor the workshop and tools needed to make the parts.

So my reason for building this model is to fulfil a young boy’s dream.

This is intended to be a full series of articles describing the construction in detail as the project progresses. I expect it to take 1 to two years.

3/4″ Scale Bassett Lowke Traction Engine Model Photos

I hasten to explain that the above photos of models of the 3/4″ Scale Burrell Traction are not photos of my engine!

Front Cover Copies From Instruction Manuals

The next gallery shows some copies of the front covers of the Instruction Manuals for building the model, plus one advert as published in a magazine at the time.

Instructions And Drawings

I was lucky enough to find a set of the original drawings (4 Sheets at A1) and a copy of the Instructions on eBay and promptly purchased them. Here is part of one of the sheets of drawings:-

Drawings CAD And Castings

In the 1950s, a period just after WWII had finished, model engineers workshops and workshop tools were rather rudimentary and scarce. 

To help people to build this model engine Bassett Lowke made available sets of castings and finished parts as shown in the scanned image below:-

In addition to offering finished machined items like the cylinder, drive gears, steering worm and wheel as well as boiler fittings, use was made of 26 castings, available from Bassett Lowke.

The drawings, therefore do not detail these parts.

So anyone building the engine today (2025+) will have to firstly make his own detailed drawings of each component and then fabricate the part or have patterns and castings made, as appropriate.

In my case, I’m making a full set of CAD drawings for all components and will be fabricating or machining them from solid stock.

I’ll be posting CAD drawings as they are finalised.