Interesting new Hobby, Steam Engines.

I am going to get into the hobby of Steam Engines, I found an awesome place here in the USA that makes working models, and they do most of it old world style, as few modern techniques as possible. They work out of a aging garage. IT is run by a retired Mechanical engineer. Check out the Jensen line at www.Jensensteamengines.com I have been watching them run on the youtube website and looking at old steam powered tractors. Wish I could afford one of the old antique tractors, I would chug around town all day blowing the whistle. Deffinately an awesome hobby to get into. Jensen also has a model steam turbine and they have a generator too that you can buy to hook to them. They can run erector sets and many other model equipment. Totally awesome.

 

one of those things that looks so pretty or cool but i'll just never get. i'm so not mechanically inclined.

 

Yeah, the men seem to get into it more than women, it seems to be like that with most mechanical things. Women normally just don't have a interest in such things. But some of the best mechanics out there are also women.

 

i wouldn't know. i'm mechanically challenged. though my mom is very handy & my sis is a seabee/longshoreman.

 

whats a seabee/longshoreman

 

Intrestingly enough, I've gotten into cotton gin's.

 

I'm like that guy from happiness. I collect postcards and stick them to the wall with my juices while talking to men on the phone.

 

While all the other kids went to the beach for their summers, lucky me got to stay with my dad, working in 100 degree humidity, lying in the sand pulling trannys and rearends, digging water lines, clearing shoreline, weeding fireant infested gardens, chopping trees, and building houses, still have huge callouses on my hands from those summers. I'm mechanically inclined but avoid it when possible, though I never let anyone else touch my vehicles.

 

Steam tractors are awesome There's a small town near here that has a sort of farm themed museum with tons of old machinery, everything from the late 1800s steam tractors (that look like a train driving on road wheels) to early gas tractors, really old cars, all kinds of cool stuff... During a long weekend each summer they fire up the ones that are still running and drive them around like a parade.

Being mechanically inclined I usually hang out with the guys working on them and got to drive some of them, like a 1909 Sawyer Massey gas tractor and a 1914 Model T. The Massey was so cool because it was like riding a steel dinosaur lumbering along, chugging away and spraying oil and water all over the place I would love to drive a steamer too but you need a steam ticket which I don't have (and would never use otherwise).

 

i used to be on a forum for machinist hobbiests, that started out as, had a whole section for, live steam hobbiests. you have perhapse heard of hernia gauge trains? these are mostly, but they don't entirely have to be, models that you, and often a considerable number of others at the same time, can ride on. generaly on nonscale rider cars pulled by model locomotives that run on 7 1/4 or 7 1/2" gauge track.

one of the links i posted in the favorite other sites thread was to sacramento valley live steamers, the nearest club track to where i live. it wanders all over one end of a public park (and an adjacent piece of land owned by the club) near the river.

it's a bit more expensive of a hobby then i can do more then 'armchair', but if i had a little more room to work with and collect things like old appliances i could probably kluge something up. for steam though of course you need qualified boiler inspecters to check your work, for the sake of your own safety and those arround you when you fire one up, whether it runs on rails or tyres, or sits in one place and runs some other kind of machinery. like maybe a lathe or milling machine. to build more live steam gizmos with. the little jensens are great but there's a whole universe beyond them as well.

i'd almost forgotten about them. there's also heat engines if you've ever heard of them. that run by often relatively small heat differentials. i've seen a solar fan heat engine somewhere on the net.

first time i heard about those, believe it or not, was in mother earth news. second time though was on the net, linked from one of those live steam sites.

there's about a gazillion gazillion websites related to this topic, although most people probably wouldn't stumble on them unless they had some idea what they were and were looking for something related.

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I prefer diesel myself, from the late 50's till today.