page_title: Mamod
section_title: ME1, ME2 and ME3 Marine Steam Engines
hierarchical_section_title: Mamod / Mobile Engine Range 1961 - to date / ME1, ME2 and ME3 Marine Steam Engines
caption_attribution_description: English: The photograph shows a hand built Hobbies Arrow built to commercially available plans, housing a Mamod ME2 power plant.
context_page_description: Mamod is a British toy manufacturer specialising in manufacturing live steam models. The company was founded in 1937 in Birmingham in the UK by Geoffrey Malins. The name is a portmanteau of Malins Models. Malins started off making steam engines which were sold under the Hobbies brand name but he soon started selling them under the Mamod brand name. The first models produced were of stationary steam engines. Much later the company also began creating models of road rollers, traction engines, steam wagons and other steam road vehicles. These models were aimed at the toy market, so were simple to operate and ran at low boiler pressures for safety but were not accurate scale models.
  Most Mamod models use simple but effective oscillating cylinders, usually single-acting. Some of these engines have regulators either in the steam feed or exhaust but many others run unregulated or have a simple reversing mechanism to alter the cutoff, thus controlling the power/speed and direction of the engine.
context_section_description: Despite the failure of the Mamod Meteor and Conqueror boats (1949–52) Malins Engineers introduced the ME1 (similar to the pre-war ME1 but with a vapourising spirit lamp) and the ME2 in 1958.
  These marine engines were supplied for fitment into model boats of about 24 in (0.61 m) long. The manufacturer claimed about fifteen minutes of fast steaming per filling. The engines were finished in polished brass, chromium plate and red and green paint, with a methylated spirit vapourising spirit lamp providing the heat source.
  The ME1 was a direct drive engine, the boiler was 1.75 in (44 mm) in diameter. The cylinder size was 0.75 in (19 mm) stroke by ⁵/₁₆ inch (8 mm) bore, driving a two-bladed 1.25 in (32 mm) diameter propeller.
  The ME2 was introduced in 1958 at the same time as the ME1. Dimensions of this engine are the same as the ME3, except that it had a Mamod upright engine as opposed to the SEL upright engine used in the ME3. The ME2 was not particularly successful and was replaced by the ME3 in 1965. The fact that the ME1 represented a complete engine unit, whilst the ME2 basically was the boiler and engine unit probably worked against their success.
  The ME3 was basically similar to the ME2 equipped with a heavier duty engine unit (an SEL 1560 Steam Launch Unit) designed to turn a bigger propeller. The unit used the ME1 boiler, but with a stroke of ½ in (12.5 mm) and a bore of ⁷/₁₆ in (11 mm) the engine could drive a 1.5 in (38 mm) diameter three-bladed propeller through a dogged pulley arrangement, as opposed to the stern tube system used by the ME1. Like most of the marine engines made by Mamod, the SEL engine lacked a lubricator and needed careful setting up to work correctly. The ME3 was in production from 1965 to 1972, by which time, and after 2,700 units, all the SEL engines that Malins Engineers had purchased at a knock-down price from J & L Randall (parent of the SEL brand) had been used up.
caption: A Hobbies 'Arrow' named Eldoret, showing the inner workings with a Mamod ME2 steam power plant.
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