Chestermere resident and retired engineer showcased his one-of-a-kind steam bicycle during a Chestermere Historical Foundation presentation on Jan. 21.
“I worked as an engineer downtown for large pipeline projects. A lot of times, I would do a PowerPoint presentation to explain going through something technical,” said Treasurer of the Chestermere Historical Foundation Todd McBride.
“This was just a little different of a presentation. It was just to show people something interesting,” he said.
Growing up, steam engines had always interested McBride, as he would play with them as toys.
“There is family history there, my grandpa had run a steam sawmill in Ontario around 1900, then in western Canada working for the CN railway as they built the bridges,” McBride added. “There was a family interest in steam.”
After McBride retired, he purchased a steamboat. However, he was looking for a project to work on in his shop.
“I stumbled onto a steam bicycle on the internet and thought I should build one of those that would be easy, then I can go down for coffee with my steam bike, and everybody will think that’s weird,” McBride said.
“So, I went to work. I designed a steam engine and boiler that would fit on a bicycle, found myself a 1940’s bicycle, built the steam engine last spring in my shop, tested it out, mounted it on the bicycle, and had it running in July,” he said.
Adding, “It was a chance to make something unique and highly novel.”
Next spring, McBride is planning on taking the steam bicycle down to the A&W for coffee.
Although McBride had the steam bicycle running in only a few months, finding the parts he needed was challenging.
“A lot of it was chasing down odd parts, and I had to scrounge,” McBride said.
Along with chasing down materials, McBride also had to fabricate a steam whistle out of copper plumbing tubing.
“The steam whistles that are used for hobbies are too small, and even the smallest steam whistle for any steamboat is way too large, so I had to look into how to build a whistle,” McBride said.
McBride is now planning to work on the finishing details of the steam bicycle, testing, refining, and getting it road-ready in the spring.
McBride’s goal is to showcase the steam bicycle in parades in the area. However, he needed to add different sprockets to the bicycle to slow it down to 5 km/h instead of 10 km/h.
“This summer, I’ll have that part of it running, so I’ll be able to go into parades,” McBride said.
“It was geared quite fast. It really had to be going about 10 km/h for the engine to run smoothly, but now even at walking speed, I’ll have a low enough gear that the motor will be turning along properly,” he said.
He added, “I’ll put the touches on the steam bicycle next summer, and get it widely used in parades, and then see what else there is to do.”
McBride’s program regarding the steam bicycle will be reprised in Chestermere during Historic Calgary Week from July 24 to Aug. 3.
