A strange little sideshaft steam engine......

[Sanjay F]

Before I start on another project I thought you might like to see this little beastie - a sideshaft steam engine. I can't in all honesty call it a restoration as it took about 20 mins to figure out how it worked and to get it running! Also, I'm not going to do anything else to it, I quite like it as it is 

I haven't seen anything like it before and wondered if any of you had come across it or similar?

- Video 1 shows the valve mechanism operated by the sideshaft side and cam.
- Video 2 hooked up to an airline and not running
- Video 3 is her running.

The problem was the timing, and to set it I disconnected the bevel gear on the smaller pulley wheel which then allowed me to rotate the cam shaft independently of the crank to open the valve when the piston was at TDC. It's a novel little engine which runs particularly well & smoothly; if it is a one-off, I take my hat off to whoever designed and built it.......

<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8PdN0OUD4A" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p8PdN0OUD4A</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHNDxDaF3x8" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHNDxDaF3x8</a>
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeYomOJ1TaM" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeYomOJ1TaM</a>

[Charles Lamont]

That is an interesting and ingenious arrangement. Steam engines with side shafts are quite common in larger sizes, usually with eccentrics operating trip valves, either Corliss or drop valves (double-beat poppet valves).

The W & F Wills engine preserved at Westonzoyland even has an axially sliding cam which has a variable profile along its length, to alter the cut-off. Its position is controlled by the governor.

[Jasonb]

Don't recall seeing a simple model with that sort of arrangement but the poppet valve engines are very popular in mainland Europe and are just a truer scale version of this.

[Sanjay F]

I've just looked up the W & F Wills engine preserved at Westonzoyland - looks interesting, be great to make a model of that .....maybe oneday when the necessary skills have been acquired 

[vtsteam]

If you turn it upright and double the number of cylinders, make it single acting, change to trunk pistons, you get something similar to a Westinghouse style twin. Many variations on the actual valve drive types with those, but they usually (not always) had a rotating valve shaft driven by bevel gears external to the engine operating a D-valve, like your engine. Although for your double acting it's on the side not the end, and actuated by a crank.

Now the full size vertical twin I just saw recently was double acting, and that was something new to me.