Small Scale:
Minnesotan Collects and Scratch-Builds Model Engines
By Bill Vossler
If ever a man was destined to build models - in this case, models of steam engines, hot air engines, and gas engines -it is Dave Leinonen of Buffalo, MN.
"Ever since I was a kid," the 58-year-old machinist says, "I was always making something, or tearing something apart. I lived on a farm, and my dad would use silage blowers and things like that, so I would go out and build myself a little blower and blow grass with it. I'd use an electric motor that had bare wires -I probably should have been electrocuted already - and I don't know how many of those I made. I would wear one out, and then build another one. I was only 8 or 9 years old; maybe younger than that. I've always had an interest in things like that."
So maybe it's no surprise that today Dave's favorite thing to do is to build working 1/8-, 1/16-, 1/32-scale model steam engines, hot air engines, and fans. But first he took a detour through the collecting of small gasoline engines. He used to have 40 or so of the real gas engines, he says, but he's cut down to a couple of dozen now.
Part of the reason he's getting rid of the collection is the engines' size and weight, he says, which makes them difficult to take anywhere.
"They just got to be a little bit too heavy," he says. "And since I was always interested in making small models..."
Some of that was fueled by a little battery-powered gas engine Dave's dad bought him many years ago.
"I don't know what age. I had fun with it until it broke, and then I tried fixing it," he says. "I can still vividly picture that one in my mind. I've been looking for another one, but I can't find any. It would be an antique now. I don't remember what it was called. I've just seen one of them since. Last year somebody had one, but he wasn't selling. He had picked it up at a flea market somewhere."
First, The Collection
Dave first started collecting small model steam and hot air engines. One is a model of a Weeden steam engine.
"Another collector eventually gave me a page out of a 1927 Sears catalog ad, with some pictures of it in there. I also got some information from a guy living in Michigan. They don't make Weedens any more, so they're kind of rare."