Live steam is

steam Steam is water vapor, often mixed with air or an aerosol of liquid water droplets. This may occur due to evaporation or due to boiling, where heat is applied until water reaches the enthalpy of vaporization. Saturated or superheated steam is inv ...

under pressure, obtained by heating water in a

boiler A boiler is a closed vessel in which fluid (generally water) is heated. The fluid does not necessarily boil. The heated or vaporized fluid exits the boiler for use in various processes or heating applications, including water heating, centra ...

. The steam may be used to operate stationary or moving equipment. A live steam machine or device is one powered by steam, but the term is usually reserved for those that are

replica A replica is an exact (usually 1:1 in scale) copy or remake of an object, made out of the same raw materials, whether a molecule, a work of art, or a commercial product. The term is also used for copies that closely resemble the original, without ...

scale model A scale model is a physical model that is geometrically similar to an object (known as the ''prototype''). Scale models are generally smaller than large prototypes such as vehicles, buildings, or people; but may be larger than small protot ...

toy A toy or plaything is an object that is used primarily to provide entertainment. Simple examples include toy blocks, board games, and dolls. Toys are often designed for use by children, although many are designed specifically for adults and p ...

s, or otherwise used for

heritage Heritage may refer to: History and society * A heritage asset A heritage asset is an item which has value because of its contribution to a nation's society, knowledge and/or culture. Such items are usually physical assets, but some countries also ...

, museum, entertainment, or recreational purposes, to distinguish them from similar devices powered by electricity, internal combustion, or some other more convenient method but designed to look as if they are steam-powered.

Revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...

-earning steam-powered machines such as mainline and

narrow gauge A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

steam locomotives A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

, full-sized

steamship A steamship, often referred to as a steamer, is a type of steam-powered vessel, typically ocean-faring and seaworthy, that is propelled by one or more steam engines that typically move (turn) propellers or paddlewheels. The first steamships ...

s, and the worldwide electric power-generating industry

steam turbine A steam turbine or steam turbine engine is a machine or heat engine that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work utilising a rotating output shaft. Its modern manifestation was invented by Sir Charles Par ...

s are not normally referred to as "live steam".

Steamroller A steamroller (or steam roller) is a form of road roller – a type of heavy construction machinery used for leveling surfaces, such as roads or airfields – that is powered by a steam engine. The leveling/flattening action is achieved through ...

s and

traction engine A traction engine is a steam engine, steam-powered tractor used to move heavy loads on roads, plough ground or to provide power at a chosen location. The name derives from the Latin ''tractus'', meaning 'drawn', since the prime function of any ...

s are popular, in 1:4 or 1:3 scale, as are model

stationary steam engine Stationary steam engines are fixed steam engines used for pumping or driving mills and factories, and for power generation. They are distinct from locomotive engines used on railways, traction engines for heavy steam haulage on roads, steam car ...

s, ranging from pocket-size to 1:2 scale.

Railroads or railways

Ridable, large-scale live steam railroading on a backyard railroad is a popular aspect of the live steam hobby, but it is time-consuming to build a locomotive from scratch and it can be costly to purchase one already built.

Garden railway A garden railway or garden railroad is a model railway system set up outdoors in a garden. G Scale is the most popular scale for garden railroads, though 16 mm scale also has a following, especially in the United Kingdom. Model locomotives ...

s, in smaller scales (that cannot pull a "live" person nor be ridden on), offer the benefits of real steam engines (and at lower cost and in less space), but do not provide the same experience as operating one's own locomotive in the larger scales and riding on (or behind) it, while doing so. One of the most famous live steam railroads was

Walt Disney Walter Elias Disney ( ; December 5, 1901December 15, 1966) was an American animator, film producer, voice actor, and entrepreneur. A pioneer of the Golden age of American animation, American animation industry, he introduced several develop ...

Carolwood Pacific Railroad The Carolwood Pacific Railroad (CPRR) was a -inch () gauge ridable miniature railroad run by Walt Disney in the backyard of his home in the Holmby Hills neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. It featured the ''Lilly Belle'', a 1:8- scale ...

around his California home; it later inspired Walt Disney to surround his planned

Disneyland Disneyland is a amusement park, theme park at the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim, California. It was the first theme park opened by the Walt Disney Company and the only one designed and constructed under the direct supervision of Walt Disney, ...

amusement park An amusement park is a park that features various attractions, such as rides and games, and events for entertainment purposes. A theme park is a type of amusement park that bases its structures and attractions around a central theme, often fea ...

with a working,

railroad. A live-steam 1:8 train at Malmö, 1987 The live steam hobby is especially popular in the UK, US, New Zealand, Australia, and Japan. All over the world, there are hundreds of clubs and associations as well as many thousands of private backyard railroads. The world's largest live steam layout, with over of trackage is '' Train Mountain Railroad'' in Chiloquin,

Oregon Oregon ( , ) is a U.S. state, state in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States. It is a part of the Western U.S., with the Columbia River delineating much of Oregon's northern boundary with Washington (state), Washington, while t ...

. Other notable layouts are operated by the Los Angeles Live Steamers Railroad Museum and the Riverside Live Steamers.

Scale

A live steam locomotive is often an exact, hand-crafted

. Live steam railroad scales are generally referred to by the number of inches of scale per foot. For example, a 1:8 scale locomotive will often be referred to as a 1½" scale locomotive. Common modelling scales are Gauge 1 ( 1:32 scale), 1/2" ( 1:24 scale), 3/4" (1:16), 1" (1:12), 1½" (1:8), 2½" (~1:5) and 3" (1:4).

Track gauge

Track gauge In rail transport, track gauge is the distance between the two rails of a railway track. All vehicles on a rail network must have Wheelset (rail transport), wheelsets that are compatible with the track gauge. Since many different track gauges ...

refers to the distance between the rails. The ridable track gauges range from to , the most popular being , , , and (see Rail transport modelling scales). Some live steam club layouts use dual or even triple gauge tracks. Gauges from and up are called "

Miniature Railways A ridable miniature railway (US: riding railroad or grand scale railroad) is a large scale, usually ground-level railway that hauls passengers using locomotives that are often models of full-sized railway locomotives (powered by Diesel engine, ...

" (in the US these are known as " Grand Scale Railroads"), and are used mostly in amusement park rides and commercial settings. Often the gauge has little to do with the scale of a

locomotive A locomotive is a rail transport, rail vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. Traditionally, locomotives pulled trains from the front. However, Push–pull train, push–pull operation has become common, and in the pursuit for ...

since larger equipment can be built in a

narrow gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with Minimum railw ...

configuration. For instance, scales of 1.5, 1.6, 2.5, and 3 inches per foot (corresponding to scales of 1:8 to 1:4) have been used on a track gauge. The generally accepted smallest gauge for a live steam locomotive is O scale. Producing smaller-scale models remains problematic, as the laws of physics do not themselves scale: creating a small-scale boiler that produces useful quantities of steam requires careful engineering.

Hornby Railways Hornby Hobbies Limited is a British-owned scale model manufacturing company which has been focused on rail transport modelling, model railways. Its roots date back to 1901 in Liverpool, when founder Frank Hornby received a patent for his Meccan ...

has produced commercial live steam-powered locomotives in OO scale by utilising an electrically heated boiler mounted in the tender, with cylinders in the locomotive, and control provided by electrical signals fed through the track from a remote control unit. They are less mechanically realistic than models in larger scales; the visible valve gear is a dummy, as on the electric-motor-powered models, and steam admission to the cylinders is controlled by a rotary-valve servo inside the boiler casing, which is also a dummy. Nevertheless, the locomotive is driven by steam that is created on board the locomotive and is hence a genuine ''steam'' locomotive. It is technically possible to build even smaller operating steam engines. Hand-made examples, as small as Z scale (1:220), with a gauge of only , have been produced. These are fired with a

butane Butane () is an alkane with the formula C4H10. Butane exists as two isomers, ''n''-butane with connectivity and iso-butane with the formula . Both isomers are highly flammable, colorless, easily liquefied gases that quickly vaporize at ro ...

flame from a burner in the engine's tender. AA Sherwood of Australia, an engineering lecturer, produced some miniature scale model live steam engines in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His smallest live steam engines were 1:240 scale which is smaller than the 1:220 of Z Scale. The smallest scale Sherwood worked in was 1:480, though that was not live steam.

Technology

Working principle of steam locomotive model

A wide variety of boiler designs are available, ranging from simple externally fired

pot boiler In archaeology or anthropology, a pot boiler or cooking stone is a heated stone used to heat water - typically by people who did not have access to pottery or metal vessels. In Archaeology The term refers to a stone used to move heat from a ...

s to sophisticated multi-flue internally fired boilers and even

superheater A superheater is a device used to convert saturated steam or wet steam into superheated steam or dry steam. Superheated steam is used in steam turbines for electricity generation, in some steam engines, and in processes such as steam reforming. ...

boilers usually found only on larger, more complex models. For basic locomotive models, a simple

valve gear The valve gear of a steam engine is the mechanism that operates the inlet and exhaust valves to admit steam into the cylinder and allow exhaust steam to escape, respectively, at the correct points in the cycle. It can also serve as a reversing ...

can be used, with the reversing (if any) performed by a

valve A valve is a device or natural object that regulates, directs or controls the flow of a fluid (gases, liquids, fluidized solids, or Slurry, slurries) by opening, closing, or partially obstructing various passageways. Valves are technically Pip ...

, or by using a "slip" eccentric. More complex locomotive models can use valve gear similar to real steam machine with the reversing done mechanically, most frequently the Walschaerts type.

Fuels

There are several common fuels used to boil water in live steam models: *

Hexamine fuel tablet A hexamine fuel tablet (or heat tablet, Esbit) is a form of solid fuel in :wikt:tablet, tablet form. The tablets burn smokelessly, have a high energy density, do not liquefy while burning and leave no ashes. Invented in 1936 in Murrhardt, Germa ...

s – which produce relatively little heat but are cheap and relatively safe. They are often used on "toy" live steam locomotives and engines, such as the newer models in the range produced by Mamod. *

Methylated spirit Denatured alcohol, also known as methylated spirits, metho, or meths in Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom, and as denatured rectified spirit, is ethanol that has additives to make it poisonous, bad-tasting, f ...

, (methanol/ethanol mixture) – which burns hotter than solid fuel, but, as with any flammable liquid, requires more careful handling. Cheap and easy to obtain, this fuel was used with early Mamod models. *

Butane Butane () is an alkane with the formula C4H10. Butane exists as two isomers, ''n''-butane with connectivity and iso-butane with the formula . Both isomers are highly flammable, colorless, easily liquefied gases that quickly vaporize at ro ...

gas – clean burning and safe, but relatively expensive to engineer the burners. *

Electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

– delivered via the track and used to boil the water with an

immersion heater Electric heating is a process in which electrical energy is converted directly to heat energy. Common applications include space heating, cooking, water heating and industrial processes. An electric heater is an electrical device that convert ...

. In 2003, Hornby launched a range of 00 gauge models that run from a 10 to 17 Volt power supply, making this method safer than previous, higher voltage versions. *

Coal Coal is a combustible black or brownish-black sedimentary rock, formed as rock strata called coal seams. Coal is mostly carbon with variable amounts of other Chemical element, elements, chiefly hydrogen, sulfur, oxygen, and nitrogen. Coal i ...

– which is the prototypical fuel for most full-sized steam locomotives, and the preferred fuel for ridable trains. It can also be used in boilers down to at least 16mm:1 foot scale. *

Oil An oil is any nonpolar chemical substance that is composed primarily of hydrocarbons and is hydrophobic (does not mix with water) and lipophilic (mixes with other oils). Oils are usually flammable and surface active. Most oils are unsaturate ...

– also a popular fuel for large, ridable trains. *

Propane Propane () is a three-carbon chain alkane with the molecular formula . It is a gas at standard temperature and pressure, but becomes liquid when compressed for transportation and storage. A by-product of natural gas processing and petroleum ref ...

gas – an alternative to coal or oil in large-scale models. Propane has also been used successfully as fuel in smaller 1:48 scale live steam locomotives produced most notably by Roland Neff.

Road vehicles

Live steam road vehicles are popular with model engineers because they are not restricted to running on tracks or water and can be easily transported to rallies and exhibitions. They include

s & steam rollers, showman's engines,

wagon A wagon (or waggon) is a heavy four-wheeled vehicle pulled by Working animal#Draft animals, draft animals or on occasion by humans, used for transporting goods, commodities, agricultural materials, supplies and sometimes people. Wagons are i ...

car A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people rather than cargo. There are around one billio ...

s, road-making & agricultural machines, often seen with ancillary equipment like threshing machines.

Boats and ships

Most types of

boat A boat is a watercraft of a large range of types and sizes, but generally smaller than a ship, which is distinguished by its larger size or capacity, its shape, or its ability to carry boats. Small boats are typically used on inland waterways s ...

s and

ship A ship is a large watercraft, vessel that travels the world's oceans and other Waterway, navigable waterways, carrying cargo or passengers, or in support of specialized missions, such as defense, research and fishing. Ships are generally disti ...

s that were powered by steam in real life can be found as live steam

ship model Ship models or model ships are scale models of ships. They can range in size from 1/6000 scale wargaming miniatures to large vessels capable of holding people. Ship modeling is a craft as old as shipbuilding itself, stretching back to ancient ...

s. These include, amongst others, speed boats, launches,

tugboat A tugboat or tug is a marine vessel that manoeuvres other vessels by pushing or pulling them, with direct contact or a tow line. These boats typically tug ships in circumstances where they cannot or should not move under their own power, suc ...

ocean liner An ocean liner is a type of passenger ship primarily used for transportation across seas or oceans. Ocean liners may also carry cargo or mail, and may sometimes be used for other purposes (such as for pleasure cruises or as hospital ships). The ...

warship A warship or combatant ship is a naval ship that is used for naval warfare. Usually they belong to the navy branch of the armed forces of a nation, though they have also been operated by individuals, cooperatives and corporations. As well as b ...

paddle steamer A paddle steamer is a steamship or steamboat powered by a steam engine driving paddle wheels to propel the craft through the water. In antiquity, paddle wheelers followed the development of poles, oars and sails, whereby the first uses were wh ...

s and freight carriers. A specialized type is the tethered hydroplane. When steam-powered, these often have flash boilers.

Stationary engines

Stationary engines tend to be less popular with modelers than mobile engines; probably because they are less easily transportable. They are more popular with toy makers. They can be anything from small farm engines to

winding engine A winding engine is a stationary engine used to control a wire rope, cable, for example to power a hoist (mining), mining hoist at a pit head. Electric hoist controllers have replaced proper winding engines in modern mining, but use electric motor ...

s and

mill engine Mill may refer to: Science and technology * Factory * Mill (grinding) * Milling (machining) * Millwork * Paper mill * Steel mill, a factory for the manufacture of steel * Sugarcane mill * Textile mill * List of types of mill * Mill, the arithmet ...

Toys

In the late 19th and early-mid 20th centuries, live steam toys were extremely popular, with some large manufacturers like

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a varie ...

selling hundreds of different models in large quantities. There were very many smaller manufacturers all over the world. Some of these, like Mamod, Wilesco and Jensen, are still in business making live steam toys, although they are now mainly marketed as collectables and novelties rather than toys. Toys tend to be less accurate representations of real life equipment than are models and many are somewhat generic in nature. The range includes all those seen as models and some of a purely novelty kind.

Festivals

A live steam festival (often called a "Steam Fair" in the UK and a live steam "meet" in the US) is a gathering of people interested in steam engine technology. Locomotives, trains,

s, steam wagons, steam rollers, showman's engines and

tractors A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a Trailer (vehicle), trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or constructio ...

steam boat A steamboat is a boat that is propelled primarily by steam power, typically driving propellers or paddlewheels. The term ''steamboat'' is used to refer to small steam-powered vessels working on lakes, rivers, and in short-sea shipping. The ...

s and

cars A car, or an automobile, is a motor vehicle with wheels. Most definitions of cars state that they run primarily on roads, seat one to eight people, have four wheels, and mainly transport people rather than cargo. There are around one billio ...

, and

s may be on display, both full-sized and in miniature. Rides may also be offered.

Publications

There are several magazines devoted to the live steam hobby: " Model Engineer" is an English publication that is published twice a month and was founded in 1898. Most locomotive articles have an "English" flavour popular in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. The magazine is aimed at constructors but also covers non-steam and non-rail model engineering interests. " Live Steam & Outdoor Railroading" is a U.S. magazine, founded in 1966 and devoted to the live steam hobby, as well as to other uses of miniature and full-size steam. Originally, it was a

mimeograph A mimeograph machine (often abbreviated to mimeo, sometimes called a stencil duplicator or stencil machine) is a low-cost duplicating machine that works by forcing ink through a stencil onto paper. The process is called mimeography, and a co ...

newsletter A newsletter is a printed or electronic report containing news concerning the activities of a business or an organization that is sent to its members, customers, employees or other subscribers. Newsletters generally contain one main topic of ...

, but soon expanded into magazine format. In 2005, the name was changed from "Live Steam". It is currently published bi-monthly, with a press run of slightly over 10,000 (Dec. 2004). The now-defunct publication (launched in 2006), was "The Home Railway Journal". which was specifically aimed at enthusiasts with ride-on railways (although not just steam-powered) in North America. It was published quarterly in Sacramento, California, US.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Live Steam Rail transport modelling Amusement rides based on rail transport Steam power

Railroads or railways

Scale

Track gauge

Technology

Fuels

Road vehicles

Boats and ships

Stationary engines

Toys

Festivals

Publications

See also

References