I think the lack of obvious magneto mountings, doesn’t mean that there weren’t any; the gear wheel behind the sprocket, appears to be attached to a camshaft, a similar shaft is evident on the other side , but lacking a gear wheel , they would be the obvious take off points for an ignition system.
The inlet manifold is missing,(confusing the plot) below that ,what looks like a coolant rail is in place; on top of the cylinders, the flanges may have been part of the priming system, often needed at that time.
The engine is missing too many parts to definitively say one way or the other if it was steam driven or petrol.
the shaft you mention is the drive end for the second camshaft, although as you say its missing its drive gear, also there are no spark plugs evideint, nor are there any apparent mounting holes for them, the overhead ramps going down into each cylinder appear to me to be the mountings for pressure relief valves, as they appear to feed directly into the cylinder chambers themselves, which would make compression for a combustion engine impossible without some sort of pressure valve.
Also as mentioned above, the heavy use of brass and bronze parts would seemingly indicate that it spent a lot of time around either water or steam.
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