Model Engineer issue 4720 20 PAGE PREVIEW

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THE ORIGINAL MAGAZINE FOR MODEL ENGINEERS Vol. 231 No. 4720 30 June – 13 July 2023

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Engineer’s Day Out

A ride on the Exbury Gardens railway

New Workshop

Enlarging a garage

Whoops!

The Montparnasse accident

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BRIDGEND MES

We visit a thriving club in South Wales

Published by Mortons Media Group Ltd, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6JR Tel: 01507 529589 Fax: 01507 371066 © 2023 Mortons Media ISSN 0026-7325 w w w. m odel-engineer .co.uk E DIT O RI A L Edi tor: Martin R. Evans D eputy edi tor: Diane Carney D esigner: Druck Media Pvt. Ltd. Club N e w s: Geoff Theasby I l lustrator: Grahame Chambers P ubl isher: Steve O’Hara C U S T O M E R S E R VIC E S G eneral Q ueries and B ackIssues 01507 529529 Monday-Friday: 8.30am-5pm Answerphone 24hr help@classicmagazines.co.uk www.classicmagazines.co.uk AD V E R TISIN G Group advert ising m anager: Sue Keily A dvert ising: Craig Amess camess@mortons.co.uk Tel: 01507 529537 A d product ion: Andy Tompkins B y post: Model Engineer advertising, Mortons Media Group, Media Centre, Morton Way, Horncastle, Lincs LN9 6JR P U B LIS HIN G S ales and distribut ion m anager: Carl Smith M arket ing m anager: Charlotte Park C o m m ercialdirector: Nigel Hole P ubl ishing director: Dan Savage S U B S C RIP TIO N Full subscription rates (but see page 66 for offer): (12 months, 26 issues, inc post and packing) – UK £128.70. Export rates are also available, UK subscriptions are zero-rated for the purposes of Value Added Tax. Enquiries:subscript ions @ m ortons.co.uk P RIN T AN D DIS T RIB U TIO N S Printed by: William Gibbons & Son, 26 Planetary Road, Willenhall, West Midlands, WV13 3XB Distribut ion by: Seymour Distribution Limited, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London EC1A 9PT E DIT O RI A L C O N T RIB U TIO N Accepted photographs and articles will be paid for upon publication. Items we cannot use will be returned if accompanied by a stamped addressed envelope and recorded delivery must clearly state so and enclose sufficient postage. In common with practice on other periodicals, all material is sent or returned at the contributor’s own risk and neither Model Engineer, the editor, the staff nor Mortons Media Ltd can be held responsible for loss or damage, howsoever caused. The opinions expressed in Model Engineer are not necessarily those of the editor or staff. This periodical must not, without the written consent of the publishers first being given, be lent, sold, hired out or otherwise disposed of in a mutilated condition or in other unauthorised cover by way of trade or annexed to or as part of any publication or advertising, literary or pictorial manner whatsoever.

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Vol.231 No.4720 30 June –13 July 2023 68 SMOKE RINGS

News, views and comment on the world of model engineering.

69 THE MONTPARNASSE ACCIDENT

Ron Fitzgerald tells the story of the famous accident and looks into the history of the class of locomotive involved.

73 AN ENGINEER’S DAY OUT

Roger Backhouse ventures into the New Forest for a ride on the Exbury Gardens railway.

77 THE EATING OF ELEPHANTS Steve Goodbody argues that anything is possible if you take it a bite at a time.

80 A NEW WORKSHOP

Peter Seymour-Howell takes a break from building Flying Scotsman to build a new workshop.

83 A FIVE-INCH GAUGE 0-4-0 PADARN RAILWAY TENDER LOCOMOTIVE Luker presents Fire Queen, a Welsh slate quarry locomotive.

88 POSTBAG

Readers’ letters.

89 CLUB DIARY Future Events

THE ORIGINAL MAGAZINE FOR MODEL ENGINEERS Vol. 231 No. 4720 30 June – 13 July 2023

http://www.facebook.com/modelengineersworkshop Join our online community www.model-engineer.co.uk

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See page 66 for details.

Engineer’s Day Out

A ride on the Exbury Gardens railway

New Workshop

Enlarging a garage

Whoops!

90 BEER HEIGHTS LIGHT RAILWAY SIGNALLING Mike Hanscomb describes the signalling system at the Beer Heights Light Railway at Pecorama in Devon.

91 ELECTRICITY GENERATORS FOR MODEL STEAM ENGINES Bob Hayter teams up the new technology of dynamos and generators with the old technology of steam engines.

95 POCKET CALCULATORS

Henk-Jan de Ruiter looks back to the days when calculations were done mechanically.

98 BASIC OSCILLATOR STEAM ENGINE IN CAD

Luis Trincão leads us through the creation of a 3D CAD model of an oscillating steam engine.

101 LNER B1 LOCOMOTIVE

Doug Hewson presents a true to scale 5 inch gauge model of Thompson’s B1.

105 WE VISIT THE BRIDGEND MES

John Arrowsmith spends a day in the sunshine in South Wales.

109 RADIAL VALVE GEARS AGAIN

Duncan Webster explores the subtleties of valve gear operation.

112 CLUB NEWS

Geoff Theasby compiles the latest from model engineering clubs around the world.

ON THE COVER...

An electricity generating set consisting of a DC dynamo driven by a miniature steam turbine (photo: Bob Hayter).

The Montparnasse accident

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BRIDGEND MES

We visit a thriving club in South Wales

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Young Engineers

M AR T I N E V AN S Editor

D I AN E C AR N E Y Assistant Editor

IMLEC 2023

It seems to be the season for awarding prizes to young engineers!

Both NAME (the Northern Association of Model Engineers) and FMES (the Federation of Model Engineering Societies) have held award ceremonies recently.

One of the stated aims of NAME is to encourage younger people to develop themselves by getting involved in model engineering.

To that end NAME make several awards every year. This year presentations were a bit delayed following the sudden and untimely death of the NAME chairman, Frank Cooper.

Recently the Junior award was made to Alfie Dunning at Wrexham and District Society of Model Engineers by NAME chairman John Bennett (p h o t o 1 ).

The youngest member of Peterborough Society of Model Engineers, James Barrett, has been awarded a Certificate of Commendation by the Federation of Model Engineering Societies. As an additional prize, James was also awarded a voucher from Polly Model Engineering. The presentations were made at a meeting of the Society on Monday June 5th 2023.

The award was for his activities within the Society and for his project, which was to make an adaptor to enable ER40 collets to be used in a milling machine with an INT40 taper. Once the machining had been completed the tapers were blued and scraped to ensure a perfect fit.

Events

As far as events go, July seems to be the month for them.

The month kicks off with the Stoke Park Railway Gala at the Guildford MES track on Saturday and Sunday, July 1st and 2nd. Admission is free. See www.gmes.org.uk The following weekend is the International Miniature Locomotive Efficiency Competition (IMLEC), to be held this year at the Bristol society’s Ashton Court track.

This runs from Friday July 7th to Sunday July 9th and more information is available at www.imlec.uk There is a record list of competitors, 33 in all, and plenty of excitement and suspense is guaranteed.

From Friday July 14th to Sunday July 16th is the popular Weeting Rally, probably the largest in East Anglia, which takes place at Fengate Farm, Weeting, Norfolk. Although the Brandon club track will be in operation, the rally covers a much wider range than just miniature locomotives and includes traction engines (miniature and full-size), agricultural machinery, classic vehicles and a fairground. More information is available at www.weetingrally.co.uk Lastly, on the weekend from July 21st to the 23rd there is the ‘Dreaming Spires’ rally at Cutteslowe Park, Oxford – more details are available from Denis Mulford at denis. mulford@btinternet.com Alternatively, if you have a Kingscale/Silvercrest locomotive in 3½ or 5 inch gauge you could come along to the Silvercrest rally on Sunday July 22nd at the West Huntspill

Model Engineering Society’s track in Somerset. Further details are on their Facebook page and, if you would like to attend, please contact info@ silvercrestmodels.co.uk with your details. Lunch and beverages will be provided by the Society during the day.

In August, of course, everyone goes away on holiday!

Montparnasse

Around the time when I was a student there were three posters that graced the walls of many college rooms. In order of popularity these were, in first place, ‘Earthrise’, taken from Apollo 8 by astronaut William Anders (en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Earthrise); secondly, the rear view of the blonde tennis girl (en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Tennis_Girl); and, in third place, the locomotive which famously burst through the end wall of Montparnasse station in Paris, ending up face down on the pavement outside. This featured in Bob Bramson’s recent series on locomotive braking (M.E.4717 et seq.).

In this issue (page 69), Ron Fitzgerald fills in the story of that mishap and goes on to look at the class of locomotives to which the star of the show belonged.

Martin Evans can be contacted on the mobile number or email below and would be delighted to receive your contributions, in the form of items of correspondence, comment or articles.

07710-192953 M E e d it o r @ m o r t o n s . c o . u k

Weeting Rally

Stoke Park Rally

68

Alfie Dunning is presented with his award by John Bennett, chairman of NAME. Left to right: Laura, Alfie and Mike Dunning, John Bennett (chairman), Chris Newton, John, James Archer (secretary).

James Barrett (centre) is presented with his Polly Model Engineering voucher by Peter Squire, secretary of FMES, accompanied by Bob Polley.

M o d e l E n g i n e e r 30 June 2023

The Montparnasse Accident and the Ouest 2-4-0 Express Locomotives

Ron Fitzgerald considers the consequences of a brake failure and looks at the class of locomotive involved.

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B

ob Bramson in his article Railway Braking for Model Engineers (M.E.4717 et seq.) reproduces the photograph of the Chemin de Fer de l’Ouest’s locomotive 721 in its role as an unwelcome pavement customer at the Café de la Gare Montparnasse.

Readers may be interested in some further background relating to the accident and also details of this very distinctive locomotive type.

The photographer recorded the scene within a few days of the accident which occurred on the 17th of October 1895.

Recovery has begun and a crib of timber is under construction

in front of the main doors of the café whilst an accumulation of additional timbers and heavy cables is visible in the road. This is the second of two superficially identical photographs that can only be distinguished from each other by the absence of the recovery tackle in the earlier version.

The later photograph is more common as it was turned into a poster-sized artwork N( ote 1 ).

The French periodical, Nature gave a contemporary account of the circumstances leading up to the locomotive’s predicament N( ote 2 ). The train was the express from Granville, approaching the Ouest’s Paris Montparnasse terminal station when the driver lost control after applying the air brakes.

The crew later stated that a further attempt to check progress by reversing also failed and this is confirmed by the fact that the locomotive in its final resting place has its valve gear in reverse setting. There were conflicting accounts of the speed with which the train passed through the Montparnasse station but it was sufficient to propel the locomotive, tender and fourgon (luggage van) through the buffer stops, over the concourse and out through the arched window into the Place de Rennes, taking with it a substantial amount of the masonry parapet and balustrade.

The driver and fireman evidently considered their presence on the footplate superfluous once it became apparent that 721 was not inclined to obey their wishes; they abandoned their charge.

In the event there was only one fatality, a singularly unfortunate newspaper seller, Madame Heguillard, who was standing directly below the descending locomotive and was struck by falling masonry (another version has it that she died of fright).

Matters might have been worse as there was a tram stop close by at which, fortuitously, no-one was waiting. An approaching horse tram avoided disaster when the horses took fright and bolted N( ote 3 ).

Recovery was complicated in that one of the famed Paris sewers lay directly below the entombed buffer beam of the locomotive and fears were entertained that 721 might make matters worse by continuing its journey into the cloacal depths. The locomotive had first to be lifted at the cab end to disentangle it from the tender. An attempt using 14 horses and chains failed and a 250 ton winch had to be pressed into service. Eventually by jack-and-pack it was brought down to temporary rails at road level from whence it was trundled through the streets to the railway workshops. The very solid construction of the machine is apparent from the photograph and it suffered little damage, buckling the front end and losing only the tea urn casing over the steam dome and with it, the Salter safety valves. Following workshop attention, 721 re-entered service and survived until after the First World War. The removal of the locomotive left the tender suspended but the recovery team anchored it to a locomotive standing inside the >> 69

station. Using sheerlegs it was raised to a horizontal position and hauled back into the train shed by the locomotive.

The assisting locomotive’s footplate men were clearly made of sterner stuff than 721’s crew (N o t e 4 ).

The errant Ouest locomotive 721 was member of a very distinctive class of 2-4-0, inside-cylinder, outside steam chest and valve gear locomotive that has no real counterpart anywhere else in Europe. It represents one of the earliest indigenous French locomotive designs and for thirty years it was the Ouest’s principal express passenger locomotive class.

The French Western Railway, l’Ouest, was an amalgamation of two lines formed under the France’s 1842 Railway Law, the Paris to Rennes via Chartes (the Brittany line) and the Paris to Le Havre via Rouen (the Normandy line). Of these, the most important was to be the Paris - Rouen - Le Havre, in the creation of which the London and South Western Railway played a considerable role. Half of the Ouest’s initial capital was raised in Britain and construction was undertaken

by Joseph Locke acting as Chief Engineer with Thomas Brassey his contractor. William Buddicom, who had been Locke’s mechanical engineer at Crewe, assumed a similar role on the Paris-Rouen and he maintained a continuing post-construction presence by establishing a works at Sotteville in Rouen, giving him a virtual monopoly over the earliest locomotives along with much of the rolling stock and structural ironwork. The English influence was weakened when the Emperor Napoleon III enforced the consolidation of the national railway system into the six regional organisations of which the Ouest became one. Nationalist fervour was subsequently to dilute the British engineering influence and thereafter a stronger French identity began to shape the railways of France.

Against this background the classic Buddicom outside70

cylinder 2-2-2 locomotive that had formed the mainstay of the Ouest’s locomotive stock was becoming overwhelmed by the greatly extended system and the introduction of new passenger services including the Government contract for fast postal traffic. Matters were made worse by the 1:125 gradients that Locke had supported on the Ouest’s main lines and together these factors called for a second generation of motive power. Under the line’s first French-born chief engineer, Monsieur Rhone, a new type of locomotive was evolved with two coupled axles and twice the adhesive weight of the Buddicoms although Rhone did not originate the design which was owed to the Ouest’s neighbour and ally, the Paris-Orleans Railway.

The head of Traction and Workshops on the ParisOrleans, Camille Polonceau, is today best remembered for the roof truss which carries his name but on the 1st August 1848 he assumed the Orleans post having previously been the engineer on the Chemin de Fer Alsace. The principal main lines that he became responsible for, the titular section from Paris to Orleans, promoted by the Rothschilds in 1838, and its continuation, the Orleans to Bordeaux built

by Locke with his familiars Brassey and Buddicom between 1841 and 1843, had quite different locomotive establishments. French-built Buddicom machines were strongly in evidence on the southern line but the more heterogeneous stock of the earlier northern section, the Cies d’Orleans et du Centre, was predominantly supplied from Britain, including a number of Robert Stephenson’s long-boiler locomotives, largely from Stephenson’s Newcastle works (N o t e 5 ).

The concept of the longboiler locomotive was developed by Stephenson in 1841 to maximise tube length as it had been observed in earlier locomotives that when working hard the smokebox glowed red-hot, indicating a

large amount of heat was being rejected to the atmosphere rather than being used to boil water. By placing both the driving and carrying wheels in front of the firebox Stephenson sought to lengthen the boiler, elongating the tubes and improving their heat transfer efficiency. The boiler was successful but at the expense of stability; above 35 miles per hour the compact 2-2-2 wheelbase, concentrated under the boiler barrel, tended to build up oscillations in the horizontal plane. The locomotives correspondingly acquired the nickname ‘Polkas’.

Stephenson also applied the long-boiler concept to goods traffic in a 2-4-0 design, first produced in 1842 and 0-6-0 wheel arrangements in 1843. A few 2-4-0 long-boiler passenger engines were built by the firm in 1848 but by this time, with the exception of slow goods locomotives, the design was falling into disrepute in Britain.

Paradoxically in this same period at the hands of Polonceau the long-boiler design was to undergo a resurgence which ultimately was to give it a far longer life in France than it had in Britain. In response to the inadequate adhesion of the Buddicom single-wheelers, Polonceau’s first design for the Orleans was a mixed traffic adaptation of the passenger 2-4-0 Stephenson long-boiler.

In addition to greatly increased adhesive weight with a longer, more efficient boiler, two

axles offered increased lateral stability compared to the single wheelers. The Stephenson long-boiler locomotives of the Cies d’Orleans et du Centre had outside cylinders, the most notoriously lively variant of the long-boiler locomotive.

Polonceau avoided this defect in his new design by reverting to inside cylinders (Stephenson’s original arrangement, included in his 1841 patent was based upon inside cylinders). The Newcastle firm invariably used a pair of frameplates inside the wheels but Polonceau was aware of the high crankshaft mortality that went with long, unsupported axles. For this reason he adopted triple frame plates, two of which were exterior to the wheels and a centre one extending from the firebox to the inside cylinders which incorporated a cradle carrying two additional axle bearings for the driving axle.

At 440mm x 600mm (17¼ x 24 inches) the cylinders were larger than anything hitherto used on the railway and placing them between the frames threatened to cramp the valve chests which in the Stephenson long-boilers were between the cylinder bores with vertical or slightly inclined valve faces. Polonceau’s solution (fi g 1 ) was to locate the valve chests on the outer sides of the cylinders, in front of the leading wheel hornplates and projecting out transversely over virtually the full width of the locomotive. Balanced

Fig 1

Polonceau’s mixed traffic 2-4-0 locomotive with inside cylinders and outside valve chests of 1850.

S o u r c e : L - M V il a i n . U n s i e c l e d e m a t e ri e l e t t r a c ti o n s u r l e r e s e a u d ’ O rl e a n s . P . 2 9 .

M o d e l E n g i n e e r 30 June 2023

BRAKING

Fig 2

Polonceau’s goods 0-6-0 locomotive with inside cylinders and outside valve chests of 1854/5.

S o u r c e : L - M V il a i n . U n s i e c l e d e m a t e ri e l e t t r a c ti o n s u r l e r e s e a u d ’ O rl e a n s . P . 3 0 .

Fig 3

Ouest 369, the first of Rhone’s Ouest 2-4-0 express passenger locomotives.

S o u r c e M - L V il a i n . L e M a t e ri e l M o t e u r … .. d e l’ O u e s t. P . 7 6 . slide valves were operated

by Gooch valve gear which was sandwiched between the leading driving wheels and the driving axlebox hornplates.

Five mixed traffic locomotives were built but Polonceau also constructed seventy 0-6-0 heavy goods locomotives between 1854 and 1855 (fi g 2 ) which improved valve gear accessibility by bringing it outside the external frame plates with the eccentrics located between the hornplate and a fly-crank mounted on the ends of the driving axle. In this final configuration the valve gear fully re-established the maintenance-friendly Crampton tradition of outside motion N( ote 6 ).

Polonceau’s tenure as Chief at the P. & O. was relatively short; he died at the early age of 46, in 1859, to be succeeded

by Victor Forquenot in the same year. Forquenot went

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on to produce one of the classic designs of French nineteenth-century locomotive engineering, also with outside Stephenson’s valve gear but with cylinders and valve chest wholly external to the frames.

Polonceau’s legacy was to be more undiluted on the Ouest.

Throughout its independent life the always penurious Ouest showed a propensity for adopting its neighbour’s designs, often producing highly successful and sometimes elegant locomotives in the process. Monsieur Rhone initiated this trend. He saw potential for an express locomotive on the basis of Polonceau’s ideas and, benefitting from the revised design of the P. & O. 0-6-0s, the Ouest ordered twelve 2-4-0 locomotives from Ernest Gouin et Cie of Batignolles, Paris, in 1857 (works nos. 373-384).

Compared to the P. & O. 2-4-0s

the driving wheel diameter was increased to 1.94m (6 feet 6¼ inches) but the cylinders were reduced in size to 420mm by 600mm (16½ x 23½ inches).

Triple frames with the cradle for the crankshaft featured in the Ouest design and Rhone retained the outside valve chests and valve gear but his preference was Stephenson rather than Gooch and the valves were balanced. The horizontal Crampton regulator valve was used, housed in a large dome with steam pipes partially internal to the boiler and smokebox but emerging through the smokebox side plates before passing down to the cylinders in a box casing.

The Ouest locomotives, running number 369 to 380 (fi g 3 ), were the first express passenger locomotives with two driving axles to be constructed in France, entering service in December 1857 and February 1858. With modifications they continued working until 1888 to be withdrawn as the crankshafts reached the end of their actuarial lives.

The work of the express 2-4-0 locomotives was sufficiently encouraging to warrant a second series delivered in two instalments between 1860 and 1863 (Ouest 381 to 400 and 804 to 821 – fi g 4 ). The initial batch was built at Buddicom’s Sotteville works, the last locomotives to be built there under his ownership and before it became the Ouest railway’s own works. The differences between these locomotives and the earlier machines were marginal but the firebox now

had the outer wrapper raised above the last ring of the barrel and a second Salter safety valve was mounted on the dome.

Further additions were made to the class in 1867 (846 to 881), 1872/3 (882 to 897), 1874/5 (744 to 800) and finally between 1877 and 1879 numbers 707 to 743 entered service. Each batch differed in detail from its predecessor but the advent of Rhone’s successor as Chief Engineer, Eduard Meyer, led to significant alterations. In 707 to 743, effectively the last to be built before 1880 despite its numbering irregularity, there was a further enlargement of dimensions. The coupled wheelbase was increased from 4.000m (13 feet 1½ inches) to 4.400m (14 feet 5¼ inches) and the cylinders were enlarged.

Meyer substituted Allan link motion for the previous Stephenson’s type with Trick ported valves instead of plain slide valves. Increasing the grate area from 1.24m (4 feet 0¾ inch) to 1.78m (5 feet 10 inches) resulted in the firebox now passing partially over the trailing coupled axle rather than lying completely behind it. Serve tubes with internal fins replaced plain boiler tubes raising the boiler power to an estimated 550 chevaux. The regulator inside the dome was replaced by the pur-sang external Crampton type enclosed in a box placed between the dome and the chimney. This led to a need to alter the steam pipes which were now entirely external to the smokebox, passing forward to the cylinders. The

Fig 4

Ouest locomotive of the batch 381 to 800. Notice the cradle which supports the crankshaft.

S o u r c e : M - L V il a i n . L e M a t e ri e l M o t e u r … .. d e l’ O u e s t. P . 7 9 .

>> 71

Fig 5

Fig 6

Douglas Leitch’s colour wash drawing of 720.

S o u r c e : F r e n c h R a il w a y s S o c i e t y J o u r n a l N o . 1 4 3 , S e p t e m b e r 2 0 1 1 .

Reproduced by kind permission of Margaret Hart through the French Railways Society. arrangement is apparent in the photograph of the offending Montparnasse locomotive and also in Douglas Leitch’s magnificent drawing of 720 (fi g 5 , N o t e 7 ). Westinghouse air brakes were fitted as standard from this time onwards. Some of the locomotives were built at the Ouest’s own Batignolles works but the rest of the orders were distributed across the private builders, Cail, Forges et Chantiers de l’Ouest, Gouin, and the Graffenstaden and Mulhouse plants of S.A.C.M. The Montparnasse offender was a product of Gouin et Cie. The 2-4-0 design proved to be a capable machine and by 1880 a not inconsiderable two hundred and thirty had been built making it the Ouest’s principal standard express locomotive (fi g 6 ). This number was increased by a further 85 as the eighteen-eighties closed. Of these, the first group, 636 to 706, were built in 1880 and 1881 whilst Meyer was still Chief but 621 to 635, which followed in 1888, were undertaken by his successor, Clerault. Again the dimensions increased, the driving wheels were enlarged to 2.04m (6 feet 7 inches) and the cylinders gained half an inch on the bore.

The most obvious external difference in the machinery however was the replacement of the external valve chests by internal versions placed above the cylinders and driven from the Allan link motion by a rocking lever.

Of the Meyer series, the first 22 were built at the Ouest’s Batignolles works but the remaining 63 were all built outside France. Five were constructed by St. Leonard of Liege and as Mulhouse was 72

undergoing one of its periodic transfers of allegiance to Germany, S.A.C.M. has to be considered foreign; they built 17. The remaining 32 were British-built, divided between Neilson’s of Glasgow, 20 and Sharp Stewart, still in Manchester, 12. The British locomotives carried the hallmarks of a cleaner external appearance with parallel boiler cleading extending in an unbroken line over the firebox casing. In Neilson’s case at least, the boiler top sandbox was replaced by two more discreetly positioned containers between the driving wheels leaving only the filler cap visible (presumably the price was paid in damp sand).

Neilsons also concealed the steam pipes within the smokebox but the French retaliated by hanging the Westinghouse pump where the steam pipes had previously been. The ultimate concession

One of the S.A.C.M. built 1881 series numbered 691 to 707.

S o u r c e M - L V il a i n . L e M a t e ri e l M o t e u r … .. d e l’ O u e s t. P . 8 6 towards mitigating the hardships of the crew also came at this time, the last fifteen, all built by the French firm Fives Lille, having all-over cab roofs. Strongly anglophile in his locomotive aesthetic, Clerault’s final series, 621 to 635, could easily have passed as a product of Crewe.

After the completion of 621 to 635 Clerault recognised that the Ouest’s reliance upon 2-4-0 express engines was inadequate and henceforth 4-40s and 4-6-0s only were built (he never succumbed to the Atlantic fad). The 2-4-0s were relegated to secondary duties surviving in this role well into the twentiethcentury. Ouest 715 became S.N.C.F. 120 A 909 and worked as a shunter at Le Mans where it was identified for preservation only to be destroyed by an allied air raid in 1944.

Acknowledgement

The principal sources for this article are Lucien-Maurice Vilain’s monumental if somewhat intractable histories of French steam locomotives, especially Un Siecle de Materiel et Traction sur le Reseau d’Orleans (1838 – 1940) and Le Material Moteur et Roulant des Chemins de Fer de L’Etat du Paris-SaintGerman (1837) au Rachat de l’Ouest et a la S.N.C.F. (No prizes for brevity in titles.)

The French Railways Society’s Journal (formerly the S.N.C.F. Society’s Journal) has been, as always, invaluable particularly the late Andy Hart’s contributions in numbers 143 September 2011 and the Omnibus edition of 1999.

M E

Notes Note 1 The Art Group Limited, London.

Note 2 Reproduced by the late Andy Hart, then editor of the French Railways Society’s Journal Omnibus Ed. 1999. P. 32.

Note 3 In the late nineteen-nineties Robert Sergent, a member of the French Amilcale des Modelistes Ferroviaires Independants, built an excellent model of the station frontage based upon the photograph with the offending 721 and the suspended parts of its train. The model gives a more complete picture in that it includes the horse tram complete with the panicking horses and spectators although, with Gallic delicacy, he omitted the prone newspaper lady. See French Railways Society Journal No. 98 June 2000, p. 40.

Note 4 Generally, raised platforms of the type found in British railways were not used in France so it can be assumed that the concourse would be at track level and thus offer little impediment to 721 and its train once it had reached the end of the rails. A similar accident occurred in 1964 at Bradford’s Adolphus Street goods station which had formerly been the Great Northern Railway’s passenger station. Despite the typically British raised platforms and concourse, an Ivatt Class 4, 2-6-0 over-ran and fell into the road below. Again the crew jumped clear and no-one was hurt. The recovery procedure was more brutal; the locomotive and its tender were cut-up in the street by a local scrapman. The whole affair was deeply edifying for the local railway enthusiast community.

Note 5 Ten also came from J. J. Meyer et Cie of Alsace.

Note 6 Outside valve gears became very common in both France and the rest of Europe although Britain, with characteristic perversity, preferred inadequate accessibility, carried to extremes by the Great Western Railway.

Note 7 Douglas Leitch was one of group of highly skilled draughtsmen who were employed by the British main line railways companies. His contemporaries included G. F. Bird of the G.N.R., J. S. MacLean of the N.E.R., Richard Innes of the same company and E. L. Ahrons who was initially employed by the G. W. R. Much of the most reliable locomotive history was written by these men, often in the Locomotive Magazine. Leitch was resident in Paris in 1889.

M o d e l E n g i n e e r 30 June 2023

An Engineer’s Day Out

Exbury Gardens Railway ‘The Rhododendron Line’ 1

Exbury Gardens Railway 2-6-2 M a ril o o heads a train through fallen blossom. The gardens are some of the finest in Britain. ( C o p y ri g h t: E x b u r y G a r d e n s 2 0 2 3 )

Roger Backhouse heads off to the South Coast for a visit to the New Forest.

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here’s nothing like a train ride to enjoy seeing a lovely garden. Norfolk’s Bressingham Gardens railways created by Alan Bloom are long established and several garden centres have their own miniature lines. Some model engineering societies have well wooded tracks - York’s site is almost a nature reserve.

But one of the best - perhaps the best - railway is at Exbury Gardens in the New Forest p(hoto 1 ).

Model Engineer is not normally a place for garden history but, to set the railway

in context, Exbury was established by Lionel de Rothschild after he bought the estate in 1918. Lionel described himself as ‘a banker as a hobby but a gardener by profession’.

Like others in his family, he combined financial acumen with a scientific mind, devoting careful attention to producing new rhododendron and azalea cultivars. He created over 1200 new hybrids of which 462 were considered good enough to be named p(hoto 2 ). He was also a pioneer colour photographer, using the Autochrome process whose images remain quality pictures and can be seen at exhibitions in the gardens.

Lionel lavished thousands of pounds on his new estate adjoining the Beaulieu River.

Greenhouses alone covered two acres. He employed 150 workmen and 60 trained gardeners to double dig the soil, lay 22 miles of water pipes and carry out extensive planting of trees and shrubs

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Rhododendron bloom - these and azaleas are the Gardens’ speciality. Rothschild family members had keen scientific interests and Lionel de Rothschild bred many different cultivars.

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>>

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A view of the gardens in May, probably the best time to see them although there is something to see all year round.

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A trainload of happy passengers - the train takes visitors to parts of the gardens not normally accessible to the pubic.

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Mariloo name plate with the Rothschild family ‘five arrows’ emblem.

2-6-2 tender locomotive M a ril o o outside the engine shed awaits the start of the day’s operations.

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(p h o t o 3 ). They spread loads of spent hops from Ringwood Brewery to improve the soil.

(Cue for a very old joke – ‘spread spent hops on your lawn and the grass will come up half cut.’)

Lionel died in 1943 and his son Edmund (‘Eddy’) took over.

He managed the estate after the war when it was taken over by the Royal Navy as HMS Mastodon. The site was used for D-Day preparations marked by a memorial in the grounds. In his book Requiem for a Wren Neville Shute immortalised an incident when a Junkers bomber flew over and was shot down.

Developing the railway

R o s e m a r y , a 2-6-0 tender locomotive, is the twin of Naomi. Both are named after Leo’s sisters.

8

Bremmer valve gear is fitted to both N a o m i and R o s e m a r y . This valve gear was formerly used on Orenstein and Koppel locomotives.

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Edmund was also a keen gardener and developed the Solent range of deciduous azaleas. To help cover costs of garden restoration he admitted visitors for the first time. However, it was Lionel’s youngest son, Leopold (‘Leo’) who developed the railway.

Leo was reputedly denied an electric train set as a child but was fascinated from boyhood by steam railways. His father was a Southern Railway director and is said to have arranged for Leo to cab ride trains to London. Rothschild banks were major railway financiers with the French branch of the family financing the Paris-Orleans Railway.

However, Exbury is the only

UK line built with Rothschild funds!

Despite having no train set, Leo made up for it when he retired from banking. He retained family horticultural interests and was also a talented musician. Leo travelled worldwide to see steam trains and sat on the advisory committee of the National Railway Museum. It was Leo who conceived plans for the Exbury Gardens Railway.

His first idea was for a twofoot gauge line with industrial type locomotives. This plan was knocked back by the New Forest District Council who were concerned by the impact of new tourist attractions in the area. Leo then visited Michael Schumann’s 7¼ inch gauge line in Norfolk which inspired a change of plan. After several attempts a 12¼ inch line was agreed, provided this operated for garden visitors only (p h o t o 4 ).

Leo’s railway opened in 2001. It was then 1¼ miles long and had a tunnel and viaduct, essentials for any good train set.

The layout was a balloon loop from a terminal station near the gardens entrance. Construction involved considerable earthworks on what had been partly a landfill site. Such is the size of the gardens - now 223 acres (90 hectares) - that passengers go around just a part of the grounds, seeing the rock garden, claimed to be the biggest in Europe.

Locomotives and rolling stock

There are three steam locomotives, designed by Tony Stirland and made by Exmoor Steam Railway. The largest is

M o d e l E n g i n e e r 30 June 2023

DAY OUT

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E d d y is a Hunslet diesel built in 1946 and much modified since.

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Going under the girder bridge where the line crosses over.

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Exbury Central station is based on Aviemore

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The line is properly signalled and uses a train staff system.

Mariloo, a 2-6-2 tender engine with Walschaerts valve gear (p h o t o 5 ). This hauls the heaviest trains of six coaches (p h o t o 6 ).

The others are twin 0-6-2 locomotives, Naomi and Rosemary, named after Leo’s sisters (p h o t o 7 ). Both are fitted with Bremmer valve gear, a design derived from Hackworth valve gear and once used on Orenstein and Koppel locomotives (p h o t o 8 ). These engines haul 3 to 4 coaches.

Injectors, air brakes and gravity sanders are fitted as standard. In this wooded garden, the leaves on the line problem is solved by a railway employee going round the line with a blower each morning in the leaf fall season.

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The railway’s diesel locomotive named Eddy was built as a diesel hydraulic by Hunslet in 1946 but was later regauged to 12¼ inch gauge.

It can haul two coaches but is normally used for shunting and maintenance trains (p h o t o 9 ).

Carriages are a design for 15 inch gauge but regauged to 12¼ inches. The stock includes a wheelchair accessible coach.

All were built by Exmoor Steam Railway, along with the turntable.

Station and track

Aviemore station was the inspiration for the terminal station, designed by James Dunbar-Nasmith. Iron roof supports carrying the Rothschild emblem were cast by Ballantine Castings at Bo’ness, Scotland, the last working iron foundry in Britain (p h o t o 1 0 ). The railway is appropriately signalled with a train staff collected by drivers leaving the station (p h o t o 1 1 ).

Subsequently the route was altered. The wooden viaduct did not last well so the track was realigned around that site.

Several curves and gradients have been eased but some of 1 in 39 remain and are an enjoyable challenge for locomotives and drivers with

M a ril o o ’ s cab. The locomotive was designed by Tony Stirland and built by Exmoor Steam Railway at Bratton Fleming, Devon.

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Pressure gauges on Mariloo - from the left - brake, boiler and steam chest.

6 carriages and up to 130 passengers on a train.

Thanks to points put in later, continuous running without returning to the terminal station on ‘Mr Leo’s loop’ is possible, an unusual feature on a miniature line.

In 2015 the line was extended to go round Dragonfly Pond with a new halt. Part of the line goes through an area of the gardens normally closed to the public where it spirals over itself on a girder bridge (p h o t o 1 2 ). A ride takes about twenty minutes.

Fuel

Currently the line uses Polish or Kazakhstan coal as

Welsh steam coal has been inconsistent in quality. The Polish coal burns well and, when a hot fire is developed, it burns cleanly. Eco-fuels haven’t been a success. So, the line gives an authentic steam railway experience although, like other railways, the dry summers of 2022 meant that only diesel trains ran.

Dave Giles is railway foreman and also a member of Focus Model Engineers. He says that when operating a warming fire is always put in a locomotive the day before to reduce risk of tubeplate leakages. To be ready for the first train at 11am the fire is relit at 7.30am (p h o t o s 1 3 and 1 4 ). >> 75

Turntable at Exbury Central Station. The engine shed is a substantial structure.

The engine shed has a turntable outsidep(hoto 15 ).

This was also built by Exmoor Steam Railway. Although locomotives can run in either direction, during leaf-fall season and times when rails are greasy they are always turned to run forwards to take advantage of the sanders.

Operation

Operation is by team of full-time staff assisted by volunteers. This line in woodland needs considerable maintenance, sometimes including the removal of fallen trees. The Rothschild family connection with horticulture and railways is maintained through Marie-Louise Agius, great grand-daughter of Lionel de Rothschild. Marie-Louise is a well-known landscape designer and gardens trustee who also drives trains when she can!

Opening

Gardens open mid-March to late October. Most rhododendrons and azaleas are in full bloom during May but there is much to see at other times. When the gardens are open trains run between 11 and 3 with extra trains sometimes run at peak timesp(hoto 16 ).

There are cafes at the gardens but the open air cafe within the gardens can be very busy at peak times.

Special events

The railway hosts special events such as a Hallowe’en Special and the Father’s Day 76

Getting there

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End of the perfect ride? Cab view as M a ril o o returns to Exbury Central station with E d d y ready to take the carriages.

The water tank is on the right.

exhibition of model railways with miniature traction engines.

There are also theatre and music events in the Gardens.

Exbury Garden Railway is linked to the Britain’s Great Little Railways group of small railway operators (see www. bglr.org).

The railway also offers driver experience days with one to

one tuition by an experienced driver. Pricey perhaps but those trying the experience go away hooked!

Contact details

Exbury Gardens, The Estate Office, Exbury, Southampton, Hampshire, SO45 1AZ Tel 023 8089 1203 W ebsi te: w w w.exbury.co.uk

Other engineering and historic attractions nearby The National Motor Museum One of the world’s largest motor museums.

Hundreds of cars and other vehicles plus reference collections.

Beaulieu Brockenhurst Hampshire SO42 7ZN. Telephone: 01590 614650 www.nationalmotormuseum.org.uk Buckler’s Hard One time centre for shipbuilding where many of the wooden ships for Nelson’s Navy were created including HMS Agamemnon (photo 17).

Museum, historic cottages and boat trips in the Beaulieu River.

Buckler‘s Hard, New Forest, Hampshire, SO42 7XB Telephone 01590 616203 www.bucklershard.co.uk Eling tide mill One of the few tide mills left in Britain. Please note that due to an ongoing issue with leakage machinery is temporarily out of use.

The Eling Tide Mill Experience 24 Lexby Road, Totton, Hampshire

The gardens have a large car park but public transport is limited. They are about 10 miles from Brockenhurst Station.

There is no regular bus service but in summer months the New Forest Open Top Bus Tour calls at Hythe Pier and Exbury seven times a day, and offers a delightful way to be chauffeured around a lovely area. w w w.m orebus.co.uk/aboutN FT

Thanks

Thanks to Emma Mason, Dave Giles, Phil Brown and June Stirland for their considerable help with this article (and for letting me ride on Mariloo’s footplate!).

Also thanks to Tom Clark, head gardener, for an excellent talk about the gardens.

ME

SO40 9HF Telephone 023 8086 9575 or Manager on 023 80 175526 www.elingexperience.co.uk Hythe Pier and railway Seventh longest pier in Britain with the oldest pier railway, 2 foot gauge, connecting with ferries to Southampton. www.hythepierha.org.uk Sammy Miller motorcycle collection Nearly 500 motorcycles on show with many rarities. Also houses workshop restoring classic and historic bikes.

Buckley Cross Road New Milton Hampshire BH25 5SZ Telephone 01425 620777 www.sammymiller.co.uk

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Buckler’s Hard on the Beaulieu River was once a major shipbuilding hub for the wooden ships of Nelson’s navy.

One of several attractions in the area.

M odelEngineer 30 June 2023

The Eating of Elephants

PART 17 – DISTANT HORIZONS

Steve Goodbody finds some things are best tackled in small helpings Continued from p.11 M.E.4719 June 16

W

ith cylinders complete and his workshop mothballed, we left the story at the end of the school summer holidays in 1986 with the author, bless his little cotton socks, about to begin his final year of A-level studies and still believing he would finish Elidir within eight years.

He was, as you have no doubt guessed, entirely wrong.

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Time machines

Now, I don’t know if you’ve ever read The Time Machine

by H.G. Wells, or perhaps seen one of the movies, but if you have then you will recall that the protagonist invents a machine in which, perhaps unsurprisingly given the book’s title, he can move backwards and forwards in the fourth dimension and, furthermore, can speed up or slow down the rate of travel to suit his whim.

Clever, eh?

And, amazingly, I find myself in command of a device not unlike that anonymous time traveller’s machine, so please hold tight, adventurous Reader, because, with a couple of strokes of this keyboard, I am about to transport us to the year 1993, eight years after Elidir was first started, and the year by which she should have been finished. Right, here we are, I bet you didn’t feel a thing, did you? Let’s see how things are getting on.

Peering through the familiar cloche-glassed windows of the workshop, we spy the author’s lathe huddling beneath its exsitting-room-curtain dust cover.

Elidir’s chassis sits forlornly on the nearby bench with more than one spider’s web attached to its surface and, from what we can see in the gloom, it now sports buffers, fly-cranks, crossheads, coupling rods and connecting rods, and the springs appear to be finished

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The author’s Edwardian lathe is wheeled away to join the rest of the dismantled workshop in the garage.

99

E li d ir in 1999, her appearance largely unchanged since 1987. and mounted between their hangers. But, unless we are very much mistaken, Elidir is still far from being a finished article and of the author there is no sign.

Alright, let’s try 1999 next; surely, after fourteen years in the works, and with an entire millennium nearly over, Elidir must be complete by then?

Ah, it looks like something’s happening, so let’s hide behind this bush and see what’s going on.

From our secret viewpoint we watch the author’s parents bustling to-and-from the workshop with tools and crates and boxes of materials, all of

which are being neatly stacked in the garage, seemingly awaiting collection by persons unknown. Before long, the author himself appears at the workshop door, wheelbarrow in hand, and, attached to a temporary board and nestling precariously inside, we spot the lathe, or at least a major part of it, as he wheels it past our hiding place to join the rest of the workshop’s contents in the garagep(hoto 98 ).

Elidir, we notice with disappointment, is sitting on a portable workbench on the patio and doesn’t seem to have changed much since our visit in 1993p(hoto 99 ), although a >> 77

100

Sporting a thick layer of grease, she is nearly ready for her long journey west. layer of grease has evidently been applied with a heavy hand p(hoto 100 ). As we watch, the author and his dad together lift the chassis onto a wheeled wooden base and begin to assemble a substantial crate around her for protection p(hoto 101 ).

What on earth is going on?

Surely, after all the effort to get this far, he isn’t throwing in the towel and selling up?

Major changes

Okay, with that little digression behind us - or perhaps in front of us, because, from my perspective as I sit on a comfortable outdoor chair in early August 2022 under the watchful eye of an indignant hummingbird, you haven’t read it yet and all this talk of time travel has left me confused - let me briefly explain where things stood at the end of the last millennium.

Having finished my A-levels in 1987 and spent another enjoyable summer in the workshop to bring Elidir to the state of completion summarised above, I departed for the grand city of Birmingham and a fouryear university degree in surprise, surprise - mechanical engineering. And, acquiring an interest in old Volkswagens 78

from a flatmate while there, I spent the next few summers restoring a 1961 Beetle in the hours between holiday jobs.

Then, upon graduating in 1991, I entered gainful employment with an organization which used to be called the British Oxygen Company and now isn’t, focusing upon the specialised gases, chemicals, and other paraphernalia intrinsic to the manufacture of semiconductors.

And in early 1995, after several trips to the States to work with my American colleagues - the USA being the epicentre of semiconductor manufacturing technology at the time - I moved across the Atlantic for a two-year stint, well three years at the most, to be based in that part of the world. And, as the fifth anniversary of my arrival neared, like so many of my other schedules, that timeline had proven to be increasingly erroneous.

And so, deciding that we rather liked the location, although the lack of decent tea was an annoyance, my wife Jenny and I, for I was now married, had accepted an offer to move to the States permanently, bought a house, and prepared to ship our belongings from our parental

abodes in England to a new home in New Jersey. So, in mid-1999, I returned home to dismantle the entire contents of my workshop for its long voyage westwards across the Atlantic Ocean.

And to conclude, having spent the previous twelve years frantically busy with studies and exams and marriage and work in various parts of the world, but with no time to spend on poor old Elidir, that is how you found me during our time machine journey as you peered through the leaves of our hiding place behind the hydrangea in Crowborough.

But you probably guessed that that was the case.

Anyhow, picking up the story in the late summer of 1999, after several weeks at sea, and several months in the port while the customs officials surveyed the unusual contents of our shipping container and wished they had more boxes to tick on their forms, and having done all we could do to get the house ready in the meantime, a muscular delivery crew began lugging a succession of carefully packed items through our newly acquired front door.

Inside the house, while Jenny efficiently directed each new arrival to its appropriate room, it didn’t take our heroic porters long to realise that, if what they carried was greasy, or excessively heavy for its size, or if it clanked and rattled metallically, then it was undoubtedly headed towards Mister Steve’s pile of oddities in the basement. And, sure enough, by the end of a long day, the basement bore a strong resemblance to my parents garage the last time I had seen it.

The American Way

A month or so later, with everything in the living quarters unpacked and our stress levels returning to normal, my attention finally turned to the large mound in the basement and the creation of a new workshop. And, having measured everything out and decided where to

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Secure and ready for enclosure, E li d ir sits in the wheeled crate constructed by the author’s dad.

M odelEngineer 30 June 2023

ELEPHANTS just an aged and under-sized lathe?’ left-brain returned with a denigrating smirk. ‘I do’, right-brain shot back, sending the ball hurtling over the net to bounce just beyond reach of the opponent’s paddle.

And so, the decision was made. Although I would be doing so in a basement rather than a shed, and the basement and shed were on two different continents, and except for the pillar drill/drill press which was a necessary compromise, I would continue to build Elidir as if nothing had changed and using the same tools that I had put down six years previously p(hoto 102 ).

Decision made.

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Postscript to Part 17

In the spring of 2000, with the lathe sitting in the corner and a new pillar drill bolted to the floor, the author’s American basement workshop is ready for use. locate the lathe, and after drawing up plans for a large and substantial workbench, I remembered that I would need a new pillar drill because mine, being impractical to convert to 120 volts, had remained in England. Contacting the nearest machinery stockist, whose number I had been given by a carpentry-mad colleague at work, I ordered their catalogue.

Less than a week later, and with a bang so loud that it set off several car alarms and awoke much of the neighbourhood, a two-telephone-book-sized package landed on the front doorstep, nearly cracking the sturdy stone structure in the process. Dragging it inside and heaving it onto the kitchen table, I unwrapped the parcel to find the tool purveyor’s promised publication within.

And, flicking through the huge catalogue at random, I beheld the most spectacular and dizzying array of hand tools, machine tools, measuring equipment, benches, vices, lifts, hoists, and other workshop sundries that I

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had ever seen. In America, it seemed, if you wanted it, and if you could afford it, then acquiring it would not present a problem.

As I navigated my way to the extensive Drill Press section (they were drill presses and not pillar drills here, I noticed), my eye was drawn by an even larger chapter filled to the brim with milling machines of every shape, size and configuration possible. Pausing, and with my eyes bulging like the proverbial child in the sweetie shop, or kid in the candy store, depending on your accent, I surveyed the extensive variety on offer. ‘Good grief’, I thought rhetorically, knowing that Elidir’s valve gear was the next job on the list, ‘wouldn’t one of these beauties make life an awful lot easier?’.

A difficult decision

And therein lay the dilemma.

For the first time in my life, and with Jenny’s agreement of course, I now had the space, and even the financial wherewithal if we saved, to acquire a milling machine, or a new lathe, or perhaps

even both, which would significantly ease Elidir’s future construction. Now wouldn’t that be a good thing?

Hmmm. On the flip side, I had originally decided to build this particular locomotive in part because I believed it could just about be done with the tools at hand, at a push, and frankly I still wanted to see if I was correct. If I went and bought bigger and better tools to do the job, that would surely be cheating.

And, I reasoned, I’d already machined the cylinders, one of the bigger hurdles on the engine, and I’d really enjoyed that challenge, and in truth I was rather proud of the results achieved under the circumstances. Would the satisfaction have been as great if the job were easier?

Should I buy a milling machine? That was the burning question, and over the course of the next few weeks my thoughts ping-ponged backand-forth. ‘Think of the time saved’, my left-brain reasoned.

‘What’s the rush?’, my rightbrain countered. ‘Who wants to build a big engine with

Over the course of this series you, like me, and certainly like our esteemed editor, who is patient beyond belief, may have become frustrated with the Americanized spelling that crops up in the prose from time to time. In fact, did you see that? There was one of the little swines right there!

Americanized with a Zee (sorry, Zed) rather than an Ess (sorry, Sed). Good grief, you can’t be too careful, can you?

Now the reason for this state of affairs, beyond the inarguable fact that I’m getting sloppy, is that, despite all the amazing technological advances in the world today, from self-driving cars to InstaTwit, and despite having clicked all thirty-eight necessary boxes in its easyto-configure spell-checker, my haunted typewriter, brand new and brimming with features which I will never use, simply cannot believe that anyone would willingly choose to write in British English rather than its American cousin and flatly refuses to flag any regionallyspecific spelling errors.

Frustrating, isn’t it?

And so, while I promise to catch as many of them as I am able, I can only apologize apologise for any that still get through and beg your kind forgiveness in turn. ●To be continued.

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A New Workshop Peter SeymourHowell builds a new workshop before continuing work on Flying Scotsman

I wondered if the building of a new workshop for the construction of Flying Scotsman might be of interest to other model engineers?

Since I can’t progress any further with the model itself until, that is, I have somewhere to actually build it - I thought that a description of the build might be of interest to others in a similar position. I will cover the materials used and also my approach to each part as well as giving the general layout. I’ll also be using a lot of recycled materials in an effort to keep the costs down which in this current ‘cost of living’ crisis may be of some use to others.

When building the locomotive I took a lot of photographs, and I’ll also share photographs here as I feel seeing what’s actually happening helps greatly when trying to describe something and saves on the text.

Background

A little background may be prudent. As explained before I’ve had a few health issues that and the fact that my wife and I had been telling ourselves

for some years to sell up and do what we always wanted, to live in a village away from all the stress of the inner city. Now that all of the kids have moved on with their own families there was nothing left to hold us back and so we have now moved to a lovely village in Bedfordshire. My only regret is that we didn’t do this decades ago.

So, what ideas did I have for my new place of work? First of all, I now have easy access to the workshop, as the old place had no rear or side access, which is a bit problematic when trying to get a heavy live steam locomotive through the house, especially as the years roll on with my aging body.

With this in mind, I looked for a suitable property to fit my needs. My wife was amazing because she understood how important the workshop was to me and so properties without the necessary features were quickly dismissed, no matter how nice they may have been.

Enough of that, let’s get on to the area where the workshop is to be built.

PART 1

This picturep(hoto 1 ) is one the estate agent took, and shows the state of things before I touched anything. We see a concrete garage, which is positioned at the bottom of the rear garden, and a good-sized tarmac hardstanding accessed through a double gate. There is also a metal shed and a picket fence to separate the hard standing from the garden lawn. The metal shed will be disposed of but for now will be used to house non-perishable goods. The biggest headache for this exercise is trying to protect the workshop tools while building the new unit. I decided early on that I would keep the garage in its original position and extend it to the left side as seen here, basically where the metal shed sits. The asbestos roof had to go and the roof pitch would also be raised a little.

My very first workshop was of the same construction before later building another next to it in timber and what I learned from those two units would be put to good practice here. Most importantly for the

1

The original garage with tin shed to the right.

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M odelEngineer 30 June 2023