This is the best design I have made so far in terms of the criteria i was trying to fulfill.

• the size of the item vault could be shrunk if needed


• the steam engine requires powering up to start up [Remove the gearbox connecting them to the rest of the machine FIRST] (just attach a hand crank to a small cog next to the big cog then temporaily remove the small cog connecting both steam engine vessels then once the first 2 engines are active replace the small cog and both should now be automatically running)


• THIS IS NOT THE BEST IRON FARM EVER this is just part of my learning of the create mod and i particually enjoyed this design :)

EDIT: These images are very slightly inaccurate I made a small change to the file which makes the steam engines work properly, as the ones in the images would stop working after awhile.