Steve ask me to come down and air brush the engine for one of the 2 locomotives he's building. there's too many nooks and crannies on it to just shoot it with a regular paint gun.

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The boiler's done, welded, again all hand made.
Steve tested the fire box. A temp gun showed almost 1500 degrees. Note the top piece above the flames, it's the same stainless steel that is used on the nozzle control flaps of an F16 engine, hard to get too.

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The valve stack that goes in the cab, used to run the engine.

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The steam generator.
Steve said that scaling down from full size isn't all that hard with the exception: you can't scale down water.
The brake control valve that he designed wasn't working correctly. It worked fine using compressed air as a test, wouldn't work with steam. The holes in the valve that control the flow are maybe 1/32ond. It took Steve a couple months to figure out that if the steam condensed, a drop of water could block these holes and the brakes wouldn't work. Enlarging these holes by 0.010 inch solved the problem. Shows how hard these machines are to build from scratch.

The steam turbine generator, spins 10,000, produces 6 volts.
One of the few things Steve has to buy instead of build, cost- $650.

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Amazing.....the guy is some kinda genius I'm thinking....Was it ever discussed how much one of these costs the end user?

Good job on the painting.....I saw a little run over on the.........just kidding!

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What's wild is that Steve is a self taught machinest, he took over the business (custom gun sights and aligna-bore)from his dad a long time ago. Never went to school for machining. He also built all my kart engines when we were both racing. He's also building a 34 Plymouth street rod.

I don't know the exact price on these engines (he's building 2 for the same guy) but, the last one he sold (which was not as complicated) was $32,000.

I figured it was pricey......what fuel is he using to heat the boiler? He will probably hand make his own engine for the street rod.....

Amazing - hard to fathom how much work and fabrication goes into that!

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Prophane for the test.

No he didn't even build the engine, didn't have time. But then the engine is the only thing done on the Plymouth.

Inbetween all that, last year he had to help build his brothers machine shop that burnt down.
I was there doing the roofing.

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My bet is you now have locomotive breath.

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No but I B searchin' for Crosseyed Mary.

I saw her at Walmart.

Neat pictures, Bill!



Always good to see some non-Corvette related craziness for a change ...