Got the old Mamod minor 1 engine running, kids love it (and me).

It smells somewhat like a real steam engine.

It entertained the kids until it ran out of steam (pun intended), then they went back on their ipads.

Mamod is a British toy manufacturer specialising in manufacturing live steammodels. 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.