In preparation for tomorrows #twittersteamrally I dug out a tiny steam engine that's several years older then I am.
I've no idea why my dad bought the Mamod Minor 2 steam plant years ago. I only recall it being steamed once, and that was in the kitchen where it slid itself around the worktop on a thin slick of water. Plans were mentioned of turning it into a steam tram, but obviously nothing came of this.
Anyway, out of curiosity, I pulled it out of storage, filled the burner with lovely smelling meths, topped the boiler up with hot water and gave it a go.
And off it ran! I guess that the Mamod is so simple, there is very little to go wrong with it and so at at least 55 years old, it is still happy to chunter away.
After the run, my little engine looked a bit of a state, so it was time to dig out the Brasso and some elbow grease.
The brass appears to be lacquered, but there was quite a lot of corrosion around the water outlet on the end and under the silver retaining strap and this took some action from the fibreglass pencil to burnish away. The best solution was to polish away the coating and accept that cleaning will be a bit tougher in future. To be honest, I prefer the high shine look anyway and quite enjoy metal polishing on a small scale, so I can live with this.
And there we are - all ready for the #twittersteamrally.
3 comments:
Mamods are great fun...I bought a similar one to yours (though a little later, 1970s from the info I was able to find) from a friend who was having a clear out.
The red paint on the base of mine was pretty much gone so I stripped it down and gave it a repaint. When I tried running it, I also found it tried to escape, this has been cured by obtaining a Mamod "Power Press" and drive band and mounting them on a piece of wood. While running could still not be described as sedate, it's a lot slower than it was without a load.
Oh the days of charming little geared steam locos based on these.
Rare one that with a filler plug
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