It's seemed that in recent years VSF has been associated with huge, rivety steam things, mostly giant walkers or WH40K tanks with a funnel stuck on. But actual Victorian engineers were often concerned with lightly-built devices that might really be able to fly, or carry humans by means of massive 4 horse power engines. The whole coachbuilding tradition was about making things that were strong but light, rather than massive and locomotive-like. If you look at pictures of experimental devices, they are more often skeleton-like creations of struts and pedals than industrial machines.
Many of them are unintentionally funny, which must surely be a bonus.
So, anyone out there building VSF devices that don't look like they weigh more than a battleship?