Our first encounter with an Otto Langen atmospheric engine occurred when we visited the Deutsches Museum in Munich in 2000.  We had seen them in books and marvelled at the creativity of design.  Nearly all atmospheric engines known to survive are in museums and knowing that the likelihood that one would come up for sale was remote, we decided that it would be a fantastic project to build a full size replica engine.

I am sure many other collectors have had this idea. Over the years we started to collect data on all the atmospheric rack and pinion engines known to exist, actually it is surprising how many have survived, we know of around 30.

The real beginning of this project is when we moved to England and I met a fellow collector, Dave Allen, who was inspired to build this engine as well.

Deciding which model we would build was an important decision, when we finally stumbled across a ¼ horsepower model in Germany, we realised that this would be the ideal engine to build.  Firstly it was a size not known to have survived, secondly we were able to negotiate access to the engine and finally the size of the engine would make the task a little easier to handle.

Langen, Otto & Roosen, engine number 361

In February 2003, driving through a snow blizzard we made out first visit to the engine. It was a Langen, Otto & Roosen engine, number 361, manufactured in 1871.

The engine was complete, with the exception that at some time in its life the flywheel and top frame had been broken and the owners had repaired the frame and replaced the flywheel with another which was available to them.  Funnily enough most of the engines we have seen, have had damage to the wheel and top frame.  We believe this is due to the engines being top heavy and when they are moved around the weight being high on the column of the engine makes them easy to topple over.
 
We spent the next 6 hours meticulously taking measurements of the main column, including profiles of the castings.  Countless digital photos and videotape footage was also taken, and proved invaluable as a source of cross-checking once we were back in the workshop.

When we returned home, the task began of sorting the data we had collected regarding the main column.  Using a marking-out board the outline of the engine was produced and from this we then built the pattern for the column, ensuring we added shrinkage.  Given the amount of work we knew we were undertaking we decided to build 4 engines.

The next job was to build the cores.  The cores were built at home in the workshop and delivered to the foundry as a complete assembly.  We decided to build the patterns this way for two reasons.  Firstly, Wayne is a foundry moulder by trade and so we had the skill available to us, secondly it meant that we could control the number of castings produced.  Given this method of manufacture there is absolutely no way anyone could use the patterns without our knowledge.

Pattern and Cores Ready for Foundry

Once the pattern and the sand cores were completed they were transported to a local foundry, one at a time to be poured.  
 
The casting weighed approximately 200kgs before being machined.

And so the project had begun.

Block and Pattern

The First Block

Four Blocks Complete