engineman wrote:
For the last 8 years I have been working on a steam powered cycle off
and on. I bought plans and parts of it in a kit from Cole's power
models, It is called the Vesuvius and was designed in 1884. it has a
combination fire tube and water tube boiler.
http://engineman69.home.comcast.net/...esouvious.html
In the original plans they called for a gasoline burner but I didn’t
like the idea of that (too dangerous for something I’m riding on) so I
built a propane burner. It’s patterned after the Reil burner but has a
closed end and hundreds of 1/16” holes in the 1” dia 6” burner tube.
http://engineman69.home.comcast.net/...assembled.html
When operating it on the street I found I could only go about 200
yards without running out of pressure.
http://engineman69.home.comcast.net/...atewheels.html
If I cranked the fuel supply up too much flames would come out of the
stack but not much benefit. I tried all sorts of ideas, remaking the
burner tube with more and smaller holes, feeding compressed air into
the burner, adding a feed water heating system and a tank to store
steam.

It may be that your boiler just has too little
surface area. There were more than one steam
locomotives built that earned the name "poor
steamer".

The other thing is that storing steam will not
help. You really want to get the live steam
into the engine as quickly and as hot as possible.
You might even want to try a superheater.