RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Visiting a model boat show I could not help but notice a couple of steam powered tugs. It really inspired me from the engineering point of view and as a challenging project to build my own steam engine that could be installed in a model ship. After surging through some old engineering magazines I found a four cylinder oscillating marine engine that looked so interesting. It was designed by a fellow called Jan Gunnarson
Here are some pictures of it.

After finishing the engine I was looking for ships plans to use the engine in. I am not that fond of tugs so that left me with steam liners or war ships. Old battle ships looked quite interesting. To accommodating this steam engine the scale would have to be at least 1:100 . World war 1 battleships build around after 1905 had to shallow a draft. So that is why I picked the Preussen one of the Braunschweig class that where build from 1903- 1904 with quite a deep draft. Studding the Preussen plans I realized the engine boiler was about 20 mm to high. I had to change the boiler. The only way to lower the boiler was to reduce the diameter of the boiler tube. That created another problem it reduced the running time to about 15 minutes. To increase the water content I added to flat outside water containers. Doing all that I also decided a new two cylinder oscillating engine.