Manufacturer: Ozark Miniatures, P.O. Box 22, Linn Creek, MO 65052. Price: OL-817-S (straight stack) or OL-817-D (diamond stack) plastic, white metal, and wood portable steam power plant kit $61.00 each suggested list (plus $2.00 shipping for direct orders).

As the instructions remind us, a variety of industries used portable steam power plants from as early as 1850 and as late as the 1930s. Some came new from the factory but most businesses built their own from worn out machinery. Loggers used them to run the saws in lumber mills, miners used them to operate conveyers, and manufacturers lashed them to line shafting inside buildings to provide power to shop machinery. That means most of our layouts potentially need Ozark's model. Even if your layout has no industry at all, the engine would look terrific as a flatcar load.

The base (or, as Dave Cummins calls it, "sledge") is high quality stripwood. The boiler is a urethane plastic casting. Most parts are metal castings except for a couple of lengths of wire or brass rod. The model is 4 3/4 actual inches long, 2 5/8 inches wide, and 6 3/4 inches tall or, in 1:22.5 scale, roughly 9 x 4 3/4 x 12 feet.

It is a craftsman kit. That means you will have to spend some time trimming, drilling, and cutting. You will need a razor saw, pliers, hobby knife, pinvise, drill bits, and some CA adhesive (super glue). You must also paint and stain the parts but the instructions never say how or when.

Dave Cummins and I assembled our sample. The folks at Ozark thought a couple of experienced modelers such as ourselves should be able to whip together the kit in about four hours. You bet. We each had put in four hours before we were even ready to paint the subassemblies! Altogether, painting should take about 40 minutes (allowing no time for setup and cleanup) over two sessions. Final assembly should take about another hour. So plan on investing a good ten hours, providing you make no mistakes. I made a big one.

That brings up the instructions. They are adequate until you reach the final assembly. Then they read, "From this point I will let you work from the illustration. Just drill and install the parts as shown...." The problem? The illustration is inadequate and it would help tremendously to have a solid background in steam engine design. Dave Cummins does know something about steam engines. My sophistication ends with recognizing the boiler and that's too bad because I did the final assembly.

Ozark's owner, Carol Herget, has already taken steps to illustrate the instructions more clearly and, by the time you read this, all Ozark kits will have the improvements.

Construction began. I distressed, stained, and assembled the wood frame. It fit together flawlessly. But be careful to follow the drawing exactly. Any variation will cause problems when you mount the boiler and hardware.

Dave worked on the boiler and the metal details. I quote from his notes: "Metal cast parts were exceptionally clean. I only had to remove minor flash. The ends of the flywheel shaft needed a lot of filing and I had to drill the pulley sheave and double main bearing carefully for the shaft. That is not a criticism.

"The boiler has a seam on the back. It took a fair amount of filing down." Even though we sanded it carefully, the boiler still displays some unrealistic imperfections.

Dave continues: "The two wire parts, the flue handle and the throttle arm support, were either too short or the wrong size. We had to make new ones." Dave did one, I did the other. Neither was a problem, but they took time.

Dave goes on: "The design seems to require a lot of different drill sizes. It would have been better to have had fewer. [Ozark is already correcting that.-RR] They don't tell you, but it would be better to put on the sight gauge and cocks after attaching the steam cylinder unit because the cylinder unit and boiler casting require a lot of fitting and handling. They also forgot to mention you should paint or blacken the nut/bolt/washer castings and other details before adding them to the sledge.

"The bottom end of the cylinder casting is about 1/8-inch too long. That makes the eccentric rod too short. I had to file down the cylinder. [Carol Herget says Dave may have goofed there; one part is supposed to extend through another by about 1/8-inch.-RR] And they forget to tell you to wait until after you have finished the model to add the face of the steam gauge."

At that point, Dave excused himself and moved to Atlanta, leaving me to finish the model. I then had a detail-laden boiler, a handful of pipes, cylinders, rods, and doo-dads. I airbrushed the boiler with Floquil Grimy Black and wrung my hands in terror for a week. Then, bolstering my courage, I assembled the remaining parts as they appeared in the illustration.

One problem, and I hope our second photo helps you: The illustrations fail to show in what order the connecting rod, eccentric, and some other little rod attach to the flywheel shaft. When I finished, the parts on my model seemed crooked. Half an hour later, when I went back to look at it, I decided I may have put something on the outside when it should have gone on the inside, and please don't ask me the name of the part because I have no idea!

I carefully twisted the flywheel shaft to loosen the pieces. Suddenly, in violent testimony to the brittle adhesive nature of CA, the model flew apart. Rods, cranks, eccentrics, main bearings, flywheels, and pieces of wood landed everywhere. Four hours later I had repaired the broken pieces (a couple of those metal parts are fragile), reassembled the model correctly, and needed stress therapy.

The final phase of construction was touching up the assembled engine with the airbrush. (Naturally, I had problems with that, too, but you really don't want to know....)

The resulting model is superb. Fortunately my boo-boos are invisible and the engine looks as though it takes about four hours to finish.

Even without the new instructions Dave and I would recommend Ozark Miniatures' vertical boiler steam engine kit to a modeler with some experience in assembling craftsman-type kits. The new illustrations should allow even a relative novice to do a good job. The individual pieces are up to Ozark's usual high standards and the kit builds into a superb model and, that, after all, is the bottom line.-Dave Cummins, Russ Reinberg