The first engine for our garden empire is a Regner Konrad. It is a very simple engine that uses a single oscillating steam cylinder to drive the wheels through a gear system. Reviews for the engine have been very positive and I bit the bullet and purchased one. Right out of the box, the Konrad was a bit too colourful for me and I set out to kitbash into a small turn-of-the-century logging locomotive. Here’s a list of things I changed:
- Installed new wooden bumpers at both the front and rear.
- Installed link and pins couplers back and front.
- Repainted the underframe and cab from their red and green colours respectively to black.
- Added a new more-to-scale engineer figure.
Konrad has been a delight to operate. I get about 15 minutes of running from a boiler full of water and a full fuel tank. Because of the gear system, the engine is quite powerful and moves a pretty consistent speed on level track. It handles the light grades on the LHR well.
I highly recommend anyone interested in live steam to take a good look at these Regner engines as their entry point into the hobby.