Let me introduce myself. I’m a 55 year old live steamer from Switzerland. I have no mechanical background. When I was a little boy steam was almost phased out on Swiss railways and there were just a few live steam garden railways. However there was one famous live steam track (184mm and 360mm gauge) at Luzern near the transportation museum, owned and operated by the Brast brothers. From time to time I visited this railway with my father, a great experience. Unfortunately, the railway ceased operation in the ‘sixties but some of the rolling stock survived (http://home.datacomm.ch/slb/rollmaterial/rollmaterial.htm). The whole story of the Brast brother’s railway can be found here, albeit in the German language: http://www.liliputbahn-chaernsmatt.ch/franz_steger/182448.html.

Anyway, since then, my dream was to build and operate a live steam locomotive. I started with live steam kits from Aster (gauge G, 45mm) about 30 years ago. I bought the Shay, which was followed by the Climax, and so I built my first garden railway. Not too bad as a start-up, although the big dream was to have a ride-on railway in a larger scale.

On my first trip to the USA (1987) I discovered the Live Steam magazine and the construction articles from Kozo Hiraoka. After the trip I ordered all Kozo’s books (Building the Shay, Building the Heisler and Building the Climax). I was very impressed with these books. They are so good that even a beginner should be able to build one of these locomotives following his instructions. A few years later I bought my first house and I started my Climax project by installing a workshop in the basement.

Some words about my Climax project. The construction is based on Kozo Hiraoka’s book Building the CLIMAX, published by Live Steam Village Press). I scaled up all drawings by 1.5 for a 5in. gauge engine. For me the most difficult (and time consuming) job was cutting the skew bevel gears. A friend who has also built the Climax provided me with the skew bevel gear calculations as an Excel sheet. Thanks to that, scaling up the gears was made easier.

For gear cutting I used a dividing head and the milling machine. I used standard gear

cutters (module 1.5), which I modified (one side ground off). I basically followed Kozo’s drawings. However, I did make some alterations:

•The whole main frame was made from steel. The side frames, the bolsters and the bumper beams were all welded together.

•For the trucks I replaced the bronze bushes with roller bearings.

•On the trucks I added needle roller bearings on the center pin.

•I modified the design of the blower nozzle. I used a design from D.E. Lawrence (published by Model Engineer magazine, December 15 1978).

•I modified the design of the throttle. I used a standard valve from IMECH (http://www.dampfmodellbau.ch/).

•I modified the connection of the water gauge. I connected it directly to the boiler (and not to the manifold).

More pictures of the CLIMAX project can be found here: http://www.steam-model.ch.

You can contact the builder/author at hotzplotz@bluewin.ch.

Live steamers who would like to build the Climax in larger scale should kmow that a few years ago Bob Reedy published very detailed drawings of a 3 truck Climax in the Live Steam magazine (all drawings in inches). The article series started volume 35, number 4, July/August 2001 (see http://www.livesteam.net/artind.php). A company called Precision Locomotive Castings (http://www.precisionlocomotivecastings.com/) sells Climax castings in 1.6in. scale and 2.5in. and  skew bevel gears for the 1.6in. version.

Some useful links:

•Climax builder: http://jambuch.home.insightbb.com/index.html

•Kozo Forum: http://livesteam.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=kozo

•Ful size locomotive drawings from SLM: http://www.sbbhistoric.ch/bahngemeinschaft/treffpunkte/slm-archiv-winterthur/