Somehow I came across a video on the YouTube site about a homemade master who built, albeit a small, but a real steam locomotive. And if this master turned out to be someone "from behind the hillock", then I would probably just keep the video clip for myself and that's it. But the author turned out to be our compatriot from the city of Dzerzhinsk, which stands on the banks of the Oka River.
Although, for starters, I suggest you watch the video story that started it all

And the search began ... for the author))) The fact is that Alexei, as they say now, is a “not public” person. He does more things than sits his pants on the Internet))) But whoever searches will always find! I found him on the Runet, contacted him and asked him to tell about himself and his hobby.
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Alexey Evstyunichev :
“I have been into technical modeling since childhood. Probably, like many started with plastic models. Over time, buying machine tools, he switched to more time-consuming crafts - a turbojet engine, a model of a steam locomotive, and in this moment I am assembling a radio-controlled model of the IS-2 tank on a scale of 1:6. So, I don’t have any direction, and I don’t know what I will do later, until I myself know.
The locomotive is made on a scale of 1:12. Model weight 40kg. Cylinder diameter 33mm, piston stroke 54mm, operating pressure in a cauldron 6-8kg/cm. I didn’t check the locomotive’s traction, somehow there was no special need, but it pulls three adults.
In terms of time - half a year for preparation and a year for construction. Year is construction in free time, slowly as they say with gusto. Total - 1.5 years.

If you are specifically interested in something, write, I will be glad to write.
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I could not miss such an offer, so I wrote a few general issues and sent them to Alexei. And here's the "interview" we got.
M.O.: Why was the steam locomotive chosen among the locomotives? What mainly influenced the choice?
Alexei: Well, well, ... steam, a bunch of mechanisms, details. This is the whole point. I'm not interested in building a model that runs on an electric motor. The more complex, the more effective. Just some kind of slogan turned out)))
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M.O.: To build such a model, drawings of units are needed. From a television interview, I realized that they were purchased in the West. The question is - what company / club provided them, the cost, what difficulties did you have with them?
Alexei: I ordered drawings from a foreign site. Unfortunately it has closed. Unfortunately I don't remember the price, it was a long time ago. There were no difficulties with delivery, by the way, the package arrived a little faster than expected. It took about a month to process the drawing.
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M.O.: Making a model. What tools and skills are needed home master for the manufacture of such a model, what can be entrusted to professionals, what will be the most difficult?
Alexei: Hmm ... To build a model of a steam locomotive, you need - lathe, drilling and milling. In my case, that's all. desktop machines. Without the right equipment, it will be difficult to do anything. I can’t say that some specific skill is needed in the manufacture of parts for a steam locomotive. Unless you had to master chasing on copper, in the manufacture of the boiler.
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M.O .: The locomotive is fire, hot water, steam. What precautions should be taken, what should I pay special attention to?
Alexei: Pay attention to tight and reliable connection details. Some pads over time and away high temperature can lose their properties and at the right time steam or hot water can break out. And this is fraught with contact with the eyes, face and other unprotected places. Also, various parts, tubes are hot during operation and even a light touch can cause burns.
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M.O.: What do you remember most from the stage of working on the model?
Alexei: Yes, in general, everything was interesting to do. From the beginning to the end.
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M.O.: A couple of words for blog readers who want to build a steam engine on their country road?
Alexei: Yes, I don't even know .... It's fun to build, fun to ride, just fun. When friends came to me, in the summer for barbecue, we had fun. The kids were so happy. Very interesting and positive design.
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In the end, Alexei and I agreed that if the blog readers had other questions for him, Alexei would answer them. So do not lose the opportunity to talk with the locomotive master. Questions can be emailed [email protected] Answers will be posted as an attachment to this post.
At the end, a couple more video stories about Alexei's steam locomotive.
Trial steam engine compressed air

Old parts and disassembled non-working devices are an inexhaustible storehouse of materials, parts and other food for a non-lazy brain and non-crooked hands. There is just nothing in the "" category all over the Internet, so adding is not a sin. I bring to the attention of readers the design of the Night Light Engine.

The engine not only serves as a night light, but can ride, driven by hand or by inertia after a push, like a child's toy car. With proper and accurate assembly, all the wheels spin and the connecting rods move in the cylinders.

Unfortunately, the manufacturing process was not filmed. I'll try to explain in words.
The base of the Engine is two microcircuits. The back one is for 48 (or 40?) legs in a wide DIP-case, the front one is square with leads on four sides. The microcircuits are fastened by soldering and pins of approximately 12 mm of copper wire with a diameter of 1 mm. The pins are soldered to the pins on the side of the chip packages.
The cabin is assembled by soldering on a frame made of copper wire with a diameter of 1 mm. At the same time, it is not necessary to make a complete frame - enough vertical racks. Chips for the Cabin are easy to find on the boards of old hard drives, modems, on motherboards, etc. To remove them, you can use a carpentry hair dryer, who does not have soldering station. Cabin roof - a microcircuit in a wide DIP package with 24 pins.
The corner vertical posts of the cab frame protrude down by about 7-8 mm. The distance between the uprights along the longitudinal axis of the Engine is chosen so that their protruding ends pass between adjacent terminals of the base chip. They must be of such length that they can be slightly bent inwards after the cabin has been installed. The cabin must remain removable, because the batteries live in it.
In the front wall of the Cabin, a notch for the Boiler is machined “in place”. Perhaps this is the most laborious operation. A dremel-like tool was used.

The Boiler of the Locomotive used to be an electrolytic capacitor 1000mk 16V. The insides have been taken out. I tried to polish the outer surface, but the patience was a little lacking. The boiler is attached to the base with black hot-melt adhesive, the excess of which is removed after cooling.
The pipe is also a condenser. Its parameters and degree of serviceability do not matter. The main thing is the right size and intact outer insulation.
In the Boiler, a hole is cut out for a Pipe of such a diameter that during installation it does not violate the outer insulation of the Pipe - this is important. The pipe is held on with hot glue. It is necessary to solder wires to its both conclusions before installation to connect to the circuit. The length is sufficient so that they protrude 2-3 cm from the Boiler where the condenser had legs.

The hole for the lantern (LED) should be of such a diameter that the leads of the LED with insulating tubes put on them pass into it, but the skirt of the case does not fall through. The LED is fixed with superglue, and thin wires are soldered to the terminals, extending 2-3 cm from the Boiler where the capacitor had legs - this is necessary for subsequent connection to the circuit.
The cylinders are made of MLT-1 resistors. The output on one side is removed, and a hole is drilled in the contact cup exactly along the axis of the resistor. It should match the elongated hole in the ceramic base of the resistor (it should be there by nature). The second lead of the resistor is retained to represent the inlet and attach the Cylinder to the base. The pin cut off earlier is soldered from below to the Cylinder and the pins of the base chip. The axis of the Cylinder should be directed as closely as possible to the axis of the wheel to which the Connecting Rod is attached.

The connecting rods are made of thick copper wire. One end is flattened with a hammer and rounded. A hole is drilled in the flattened end for a self-tapping screw, in which it can rotate freely. Self-tapping screws used to live in a mobile phone. In the middle wheels of the locomotive, at a distance of about 2 mm from the axle holes, holes were drilled into which the self-tapping screws were screwed in, but not tightened. The self-tapping screws had to be shortened before assembly so that when the wheel rotates, they do not cling to fixed parts.
It is difficult to determine the length of the connecting rod in advance. When the wheel rotates, it should not fall out of the cylinder and should not rub in the hole. It is better to round off the end of the connecting rod farthest from the wheel. The photographs show that the Connecting Rod is not straight, but slightly curved - I did not want to move the Cylinders far from the Boiler.

The wheels of a locomotive are obtained from mice. There they also worked with wheels, but not with those that set the ball in motion, but with the upper ones, which are under the finger. Rubber bands were removed from the wheels, and the thickness of the plastic frames was reduced to 2 mm, with the exception of the hubs.
The axles of the Wheels are pieces of thick copper wire. The main thing is to drill holes in the Wheels of such a diameter that the axles fit into them with an interference fit. To fix the axes, the legs of the base microcircuit located opposite each other were removed, and brackets made of thin copper wire were soldered to the neighboring ones. Thus, we got "ears" for the axes.
The order of installation of the axes is as follows:
- press one wheel onto the axle;
- insert the axis with the free end into the "ears" on the base;
- press the second wheel onto the axle.

On the base inside the Cabin, a flat plastic box, open at the top (I don’t remember from what, most likely, from a piece of a cable box), is installed on hot-melt glue. It contains 2 CR2032 elements closely connected in series. Wiring - any thin, about 5-6 cm long.
On top of the Cauldron in the holes there are elements that give the product a resemblance to a steam locomotive in the eyes of amateurs (specialists, please do not worry). The shiny cylinder used to be the fuse terminal, and the black pin was the axis of the mouse wheel. All small things are fixed with superglue. Small screws are attached to the front and back as bumpers: the front ones are to the terminals of the front microcircuit of the base, and the rear ones are in the grooves of the body of the rear microcircuit. The grooves are made with an emery wheel of a dremel-like tool.

And finally, the scheme that turns the useless Engine into a nightlight.
To point P1 you need to connect the wire from the outlets of the Pipe, and to point P2 - the body of the Boiler.
It makes no sense to indicate the type of transistor V1. Any field worker removed from the motherboard from the processor power circuits is great - there are a lot of them. V2 is the LED installed on the front side of the Boiler. The circuit, except for the batteries and the LED, is assembled by hanging, wrapped in paper and placed in the Boiler.
To turn on the light, you need to touch with the fingers of one hand the Boiler and the Pipe from above (where the body is not insulated). There is enough sensitivity, despite the fact that it is not the body of the Pipe that is connected to the circuit, but the conclusions. Now it is clear why above I insisted on maintaining the outer insulation of the Pipe and its installation without electrical contact with the Boiler.
I got the duration of the glow after a single touch of about 15-18 seconds. The gate isolation of modern MOSFETs is so good, and the supply voltage of the circuit is so turned up against enough, that it works quite well.
I highly recommend assembling the circuit on the table and making sure it works before mounting it inside the Engine. The need to observe the polarity of the batteries, the LED and the correct pinout of the transistor will be taken for granted.
If, when connected to the battery circuit, the LED lights up immediately, then you need to connect point P1 to the source of the transistor - the LED should go out. If it does not go out, then the transistor is broken.
If the LED does not light up when the fingers of one hand touch points P1 and P2, connect a resistor of about 1 MΩ between them. If at the same time the LED lights up, then the circuit is assembled correctly, but it is better to change the transistor to a more sensitive one.
If, when you touch the points P1 and P2 with the fingers of one hand, the LED lights up, and when you remove your fingers it goes out too quickly, you can either replace the transistor or add a 100-150 pF capacitor to the circuit between the source and the gate, best old tubular ceramic.

Advanced and not lazy radio amateurs, of course, can assemble a real single vibrator with a real touch sensor- there is enough space in the Boiler and the Cabin. Yes, and power in this case can be simplified to one battery.