| Archive for The Unofficial Mamod and Other Steam Forum The Original Unofficial Toy Steam Forum Established 2006 The biggest, most popular steam forum around! Accept NO imitations! We have a growing community of regular posting members who chat about all aspects of toy and model steam. |
| Steve_S |
Cyldon enginesDoes anybody have any information about, or own any of, the Cyldon range of engines? |
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| Mamodman123 |
I think I've seen one in the flesh... I was talking to a bloke once and he mentioned something about them being made in the 20's/30's and that he'd round it in a skip.
Whether that information is accurate I don't know... I think it was a vertical engine with a green base?  with cyldon stamped on the bottom..
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| Steve_S |
Hm... I don't know. I wasn't aware of a vertical Cyldon but maybe. Vertical with a green base? Sure it wasn't a Burnac Vulcan? | ||||
| Mamodman123 |
Pretty sure it was a cyldon, have you got a picture of one anywhere? then I would tell you for sure! Although this bloke I was talking to was quite old... he appeared to know his stuff! apart from getting Hobbies Malins and Hobbies Bowman mixed up 
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| SPOKESMAN |
I have heard of the name - thats it. 
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| John Chapman |
Cyldon engines were made between 1947 and 1951 in Enfield, UK. There were 5 models in the range including one with an unusual type of rotary valve gear. A good picture of all five models can be found on the "Steam Toys Engines And Models" website.
http://www.steam-toys-engines-and-models.co.uk/page_1154019027906.html Incidentally there is also a picture of a Wilson engine on the same page. |
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| SPOKESMAN |
I have seen those John, recognise the cylindrical burner - I have some pics but they say they were made by L Rees and Co. Could not put a pic to the name. Good site by the way. |
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| Steve_S |
Thanks very much for that link John. Some good information there. Interesting to see another Wilson too.... until the current eBay one turned up I'd never heard of them. Nice Latimer picture also! |
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| Mamodman123 |
I see, those ones are very much different from the one I saw....
The boilers look very familiar 
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| sparky |
oooooooo dear i didnt realise my uncles got one of those we just thohgt it was home made  
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| sparky |
the smaller one in the middle he got given it buy a realation who found it in there shed!! | ||||
| sparky |
how mcuh are they worth are they rare | ||||
| Roly Williams |
They are rarish. I've seen 3 or 4 on Ebay, one of which I bought for £63, which I think was a good price. It was, incidentaly, the one with the unusual "semi-rotative" valve gear: http://uk.geocities.com/rolywilliams/cyldon_13-2.html Nice engines but they usually go for a bit more than that. |
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| Steve_S |
That was a very good buy Roly! The semi-rotative is certainly the interesting one. I've been watching Cyldons on eBay for a while, and the reason I asked the original question was that I wasn't sure how many different engines there were. There are a couple on Ebay just now... and I'm quite tempted! | ||||
| John Chapman |
I would say that was a very good price for that beauty Roly. I saw one for sale recently that was not as nice as yours and the asking price was over a hundred. |
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| Mamodman123 |
Looks just like a mamod boiler
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| John Chapman |
They are very similar, and you sometimes see them with Mamod safety valves which make them look even more similar. The whistle is very Mamod like too, although Cyldons are pre 1951 and I don't think Mamod introduced that style of whistle until quite a bit later. |
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| Mamodman123 |
Yes about 20 years later John! Interesting to see where mamod possibly got their influence from!
Nice engine Roly! |
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| sparky |
im happy with mine now aswell never realised i had soemthing like that
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| Griffin |
Thats a nice, interesting engine. Looks very well made. |
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| Roly Williams |
It is very well made. I particularly like the burner which is an impressive piece of engineering in it's own right. It's also been very well restored (not by me - I hasten to add). The only negative point of my example is the slightly warped wooden base. This, however, could have happened any time in the last half century or so. I suspect it got damp at some time before it was restored. |
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| Griffin |
Thanks Roly
It is always suprising to see how many different steam toy engine makers there used to be. It just goes to show how popular steam toys were in their hayday. |
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| sparky |
yeh it does | ||||
| Roly Williams |
When I started writing my booklet, I included a list of all the manufacturers I could find; expecting the list to be 20 - 30 names. It is now up to one and a half pages, and still growing. I don't have a copy with me at the moment so I can't count them but I'll do so when I get home. |
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| sparky |
core blimey
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| Roly Williams |
The total is 132 names!!! I quote from the text of my booklet:
This is a list of live steam toy makers’ names that I’ve come across in various sources. It should not be taken as definitive. Many of these examples may not strictly comply with everybody’s idea of live steam toy manufacturers. Some of them may be just importers or retailers and not really makers, but these are the names that may appear on the engine. Some are names of instrument makers and opticians who often made small numbers of steam engines for publicity purposes. Some may be makers who only made one-off prototypes but never went into production. Some names are better known as model makers rather than toy makers. As the borderline between toy and model is often rather grey, and model makers often made cheap mass produced models hardly worthy of the title, and some imported or retailed toys made by others as well as making models; I have included some of them here. There are also almost certain to be names I’ve missed! I’ll be glad to hear from readers about any omissions. Ab Alga Ade Archangel Aster Atwood Baileys Bar-Knight Bassett-Lowke Bateman Bedington Liddyatt Beggs Benham Bing Bond Boucher Bowman British Modelling & Electrical Buckman Burnac Burslem Careast Carette Cheddar Clyde Model Dockyard Crescent Cyldon Desmond Mentha Doll Empire Eskader Falk Fleischmann Frisbie Gage Gamages Garick Gem George Richardson Glendale Graham Brothers Hardy Hielscher Hobbies Hornby Hotpoint Hull Ind-X Ives Jensen Jetcraft Joanes John Ericsson Jubb Kagahu Kyoeisho Karsten Gintschel Kassner Kookaburra Kraft & Huffington Krauss Mohr Latimer Lee Leek Liney Major Mamod (Malin) MAR Marklin Mayers Meccano Mercer Merit Mersey Metal Crafts Metalware Midland Models Midwest Milbro Ministeam Moko MSS NDC Newton Original Model Dockyard Parní Stroje Perico Piggot Philcraft Plane Plank Precision Steam Radiguet et Massiot Randall Rattandeep Rees Regner Robert Fulton Rovex Schoenner Schroder Scorpion SEL Shaw Simpson Fawcett Southern Junior Star SteamCo Stevens Stratham Stuart Turner Sussex Steam Sutcliffe Swan Technical Engineering Theobalds Tribe & Austin Tucher & Walther Union Unit Victory Warboys and Smart Webb Weeden Westbury Whitely Tansley Whitney Wild Wilesco Wilson Winteringham Woods Wormar Yates |
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| Manxman |
That's a great list Roly and a lot more than when I got your booklet a couple of years ago. Do you have any engine lists to go with these names? What about pics? I'm still trying to find out about some of the post war makers of 'mobile' engines and particularly the 60's and 70's models that followed on from (copied) the success of Mamod and Wilesco. | ||||
| Roly Williams |
I'm afraid I don't have any engine lists apart from the obvious ones like Mamod (I'm sure we all have a copy of PS Malin's "bible") and SEL who only ever made 5 models, as far as I know.
Pics of all the engines in my collection can be seen on my web site. I have a few random pics of other engines on my computer but these were mainly scanned from books or taken off other peoples' web sites. Do a Google search for any name you're interested in and you stand a good chance of coming up with some info and/or pics. |
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| Griffin |
 The list is amazing, I never thought for one moment that there would be so many.
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| SPOKESMAN |
Very comprhensive - I thought Wormar, Warboys and Smart were the same manufacturer? (G Bowmans cousin, I think?)
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| Mamodman123 |
Wasn't she in One Foot In The Grave 
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| Roly Williams |
You could well be right. I haven't done any serious research on the names in the list - just added them as I've come across them. I'm sure there are many cases of companies using different names at different points in time or for different outlets or in different countries. |
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| SPOKESMAN |
Damn useful! Probably heard of about 50% of them . . . |
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| Steve_S |
The WORMAR engines were made in the Bowman workshops for the firm of Worboys and Smart... the WORMAR name being a contraction of WORboys and sMARt. The Smart in question was a cousin of G Bowman Jenkins. Thw WORMAR engines have very distictive vertical boilers, but the other parts of the engines look very much like Bowman engines. | ||||
| Roly Williams |
was Warboys spelt Warboys or Worboys? The above derivation implies the latter. |
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| John Chapman |
In case any one is interested there is a picture of two Wormar "Elites" on the same page as the Cyldon engines on the S.T.E.A.M. website. http://www.steam-toys-engines-and-models.co.uk/page_1154019027906.html |
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| Steve_S |
I'm pretty sure it was Worboys. |
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| Steve_S |
They look very nice don't they? Its the first time I've seen an Elite... the Trojan seems to be the one that turns up now and then on eBay. |
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| Roly Williams |
You're right. Warboys is a place name. It was probably a typo on my part. |