| Genesis |
 I was still playing around with what era my layout would exist in but .. figured somewhere in the 30′s to 40′s. With that I more or less tossed out the idea of a steam engine and decided that I wanted some kind of internal combustion engine to power the Pump House. Early on then I found myself leaning toward an ‘Oil Engine’ .. which with the description as ‘compression ignition’ meant that they were talking about a diesel engine .. but running on oil. Reading up on fuels for Diesel engines I found that .. “Diesel engines can operate on a variety of different fuels, depending on configuration, though the eponymous diesel fuel derived from crude oil is most common. The engines can work with the full spectrum of crude oil distillates, from natural gas, alcohols, petrol, wood gas to the fuel oils from diesel oil to residual fuels.“. Well then. I’ll still call it an ‘oil compression ignition engine’ .. even if it falls withing the description of diesel.
I found this photo titled “Two-Throw Plunger Pump drive by a “Crossley” Gas Engine that I thought would work. I don’t remember where I got the measurements but I imagine there was probably a mention in the text to at least one dimension. |
 Using the photo above as a start I modeled this version, trying to reduce everything to basic shapes. Everything is pretty much there. The air-chamber rising above everything is different from the photo but I found that it had a different design everywhere I looked .. tall or short and fat etc. Figured the taller version added something. The real reason for modeling in Sketchup is that I can get dimensions off the drawing for the actual modeling.
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| My Engine |
 .. and this is what I came up with. Understand I’m wasn’t trying for an ‘exact’ model here .. although looking through Google books they came in so many varieties that almost anything I come up with would be similar to ‘something’ that actually existed! In any case the engine and pump assembly will be viewed through the windows so a good approximation should work fine.
I just looked through my scrap-box and fond what looked like they would be .. uhh .. ‘engine like’. |
 This little engine is certainly not very big. Since the thing was to be viewed .. at best .. through a window this was way more detail then needed.
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 Like I said, the engine at best will only be seen through a window or the doors on the loading dock .. unless someone comes up with a very small camera that can focus up close .. this will never be seen. Oh well. Had fun making it. Some watch/clock bits and pieces help add ‘stuff’ to the engine. A couple bits of Evergreen styrene creates mounting feet for the engine block.
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| Part II |