Reply To: Traction engine advice/help needed please !!!

[Paul LousickParticipant @paullousick59116]

Hi Michael,

To pay someone to make an engine for you is extremely expensive because of the time involved in machining parts. It could take a model engineer more that 1000 hours to build an engine. (1000 hours @ $50/hour = $50,000). Therefore it would be cheaper to buy a commercially made or 2nd hand engine.

I am building a 6" Ruston Proctor SD (similar to the photo below) and bought a set of castings from Live Steam Models for about $5000. The materials for the boiler and other parts are less than $1000. I have been working on it for 3 years and need another year to finish it. For an outlay of $6000 (plus a lot of hard work and enjoyment as a model engineer), I will have an engine worth $20,000. I am not a machinist by trade and have tought myself to use a mill and a lathe. Building it yourself is half the fun.

You have said that you would like a 4" scale engine but the size of the model will depend on the size of the original engine. eg. I am building a 6" scale model of a 3 1/2 HP engine which is slightly smaller than a 4" scale 7HP Foster traction engine.

Paul.