STEAM SHOVELS A Model Builder's Plan Book

IS THIS A CONSTRUCTION MANUAL?  DOES IT CONTAIN DETAIL DRAWINGS?
CAN I BUILD A LIVE STEAM MODEL FROM IT? 

Well - yes to an extent! Chris Rueby has assembled a unique collection of full-scale        measured drawings for seven excavators from the Golden Age of steam powered shovels.

Full details of each machine are shown, including the internals of all steam engines, gearing, boilers, controls, and steering. The 3D CAD generated plans may be scaled  to any size for both display and working live steam models.  Also included are chapters explaining in detail how steam shovels move, and how boilers and steam engines function.

All plans are based on measurements of surviving machines, original factory blueprints and repair manuals, plus patent documentation of mechanisms. Options are shown for versions with traction wheels, rail trucks, and crawler tracks where they were available. The book plans are not to a single scale and, especially if you wanted to embark on building an operable live steam model, a uniformly scaled set of drawings, and quite a bit of research would be required.  A photocopier or scanner which can enlarge originals would be useful for this.  This is a plans book, not a construction manual.

The shovels include encompass a range of sizes from small rotating shovels to huge railroad shovels and are: Marion Model 28, Marion Model 37, Erie Type B, Thew Type O, Thew Horizontal Crowd, Bucyrus 65-Ton, Marion Model 91. Whilst these were all American products, non-American modellers wanting to build one of these machines may find a trip to the Threlkeld Mining Museum in Cumbria useful as there they will find The Vintage Excavator Trust and some 80 machines, including a Ruston Steam Shovel, similar to those in this book.

208 very well produced pages, full of drawing, plans, reproductions of old         catalogues and illustrations. Spiral bound. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED if you are an experienced model engineer looking for a fascinating, long-term project!