Steam Car 6

When I attended "high School" in East London in the mid 1970's, the year 10's (15 year-olds) who did Metalwork (in the workshop equipped with lathes and milling machines and Forge) were tasked with making an aluminium boat that operated on a fuel block with a copper-coiled tube engine (the heat from the fire forced out all of the air from the tube (which had two mouths under water like exhaust pipes) and then the vacuum sucked in cold water that got heated up and expelled so that it chugged along nicely.

Once you'd made that there was a simple steam engine to make (fully functional - lots of individual parts to be machined) that took up all your spare break-times to complete (most student did not). It looked a lot like your pic here. Within a few years (1979- Right Wing government) all of that manufacturing Industry was relegated to the far-east as London wanted to be the centre of global finance (it pays to get your hands on other people's money). The current government is looking to reverse that situation now.