What is "mamod"

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 'Ma' lins 'Mod' els'. 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 (in the simpler models) or have a simple reversing mechanism to alter the cutoff, thus controlling the power/speed and direction of the engine. Early models had single or multi-wick lamps or vapourising spirit burners but in the mid-1970s the company changed to hexamine solid fuel which came in tablet form and provided low heat in a relatively safe form.