Heap Of Parts

Here is a photo of Les’s progress to date on building a model of a Case traction engine to a design by Julian.

The engine has been stripped down in preparation for painting. Hopefully Les will provide some more photos when the engine has been put back together.

Julian Model Case Steam Tractor Drawings

The drawings for the Julian Case traction engine design Les is working to are freely available personal use at:-
https://modelengineeringwebsite.com/Julian_TE.html
https://modelengineeringwebsite.com/Julian_TE_2.html

Here is a side view from the Julian Model drawings:-

The Origins Of The Julian Case Traction Engine Design

The Julian Case traction engine model is based on a “Case Black Lady Steam Tractor” like this full sized engine:-

Here is the story about how the Julian design morphed from the original Case Black Lady Steam Tractor. This was the original inspiration, but the original designer Rudy Kouhoupt made a number of simplifications to make it easier to build for the beginner. (Like, for example, changing the Crosshead Trunk guide to Slidebar type)

Hence it became a very popular design that many engineers have built.

Julian downloaded his design, translated it to metric and cleaned up some of the drawings.

Rudy’s original engine, seen below, which he built for his Popular Mechanics article (Feb. 1971), is at the Craftsmanship Museum in Vista, CA.

So the black lady was the original inspiration, but Julian/Rudy’d Steam tractor is not a direct scale model of the black Lady.

Copper Boilers For Traction Engines

Les had problems sourcing in Thailand the 3” thick walled (3mm, about 1/8″ or 10 swg) )  copper tube for the boiler as specified in the design.

We have had some discussion about where to find such thick walled copper tube and indeed about the specification for 10g tube.

I offered to search for suppliers and finding none in Thailand, switched my search to UK.

The end result was documented on this website as a Report of A Review Of 7 (Seven) Suppliers of Copper Tube With UK Based Websites.

Also a debate was sparked on the desired thickness of copper tube boilers on the ModelEngineeringInThailand.com Forum on the Post: Thickness Of Copper Boiler Shells

If you have any experience of what thickness copper boilers should be please don’t hesitate to join in the discussion and share your opinions. Again, the post is at: Thickness Of Copper Boiler Shells

More Photos and Information

This page is quire short but it’s all the information available at present.

I do think we all wish Les the best in continuing his traction engine build and look forward to more photos being posted in due course.

MET Forum

or,

Please Leave Your CommentsBelow

Please leave your comments and/or questions below. Comments will not appear until I have reviewed it. (Too many comment-spam-bots) Your email address will not be shown. Thank you. Alan