You won’t find much of a crowd around the Bay Area Garden Railway Society‘s (BAGRS) booth at Maker Faire, and that’s probably a good thing; these trains are far too cool to miss, and they’re beautiful works of engineering and modeling. None of these trains are electric; they all move by boiling water with either coal or butane. It’s a true, proper locomotive running on 45mm gauge track.
[David Cole] of BAGRS gave me the walkthrough of their booth. It’s a simple oval track that took a solid day to level out. There are technically three sets of tracks, two G-scale, and another O scale sharing a rail with a G-scale track. Each and every one of these locomotives is powered by steam produced when water is heated by either coal or butane. Coal is the fuel of choice because of its higher BTU value, but butane – the same used to refill lighters – is much, much cleaner. After loading up with water and getting the firebox nice and hot, these locomotives will cruise around the oval track for about half an hour, with the speed of the locomotive controlled by a servos and RC gear.
Maker Faire isn’t the headline event for BAGRS this summer; in July they’ll be hosting the National Garden Railway Convention in San Francisco. If you’re local to the Faire, it will be a cool event to check out.
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