It's now over two years since I built my first locomotive from scratch, using brass sheet. It's still looking quite good and helped to inspire me to continue with building lots more scratch-built stock. For more information about my model, see 'Railway Modeller', July 2014, "Simply Victorian".

My model of the GWR 'Queen' class

It really was simple to build - basically a brass tube over a brass plate, with a very simple 'chassis' to hold a set of wheels at the right distance apart! As I have commented before, it's really just a wagon that can be pushed along by a motorised tender. I would recommend an early 2-2-2 as a good subject for a first attempt at locomotive scratch-building.

Components of my model

The only real difficulty came as a result of having to make the wheels fit my 'narrow' 00-gauge track, since this meant that I had to make cuts in the sides of the boiler tube so that the wheels could be placed close enough together. That made fitting the splashers, and filling the inevitable gaps, a tricky process.

I've done a lot more reading since then and it is largely fortuitous that my model has a reasonable resemblance to its prototype, as running in the late 19th-century. This came home to me when I started to think about some other engines that have caught my interest.

When I started making earlier types of carriages, I got a lot of information from the report on the accident that occurred just north of Oxford in 1874. That train (a Paddington - Birkenhead express) was headed by two 'Sir Daniel' class engines, which started me thinking about the differences between those engines and my 'Queen' class.

GWR 'Sir Daniel' class

Started in 1866, the 'Sir Daniels' were the first standard-gauge engines to be built at Swindon by Joseph Armstrong, who was faced with the task of overseeing the decline of the broad gauge. On the other hand, the 'Queen / Sir Alexander' class were the last design by Armstrong before his untimely death in 1877.

Both classes remained in service for many years - the last 'Queen' went in 1914, whereas many 'Sir Daniels' had a remarkably extended life, after the rather unusual step of converting them to 0-6-0 goods engines, in which form the last went in 1920!

They were all rebuilt on several occasions, so it is important, when comparing drawings and photographs to consider the period when these were made. By the late 19th-century, photographs indicate that the two classes were looking rather similar so, to bring out the visual differences, I decided to overlay drawings of the two types, as they appeared after re-building by Dean.

Comparison between 'Queen' and 'Sir Daniel'

Both these drawings are shown in Russell's 'Pictorial record of GWR Engines'. I have removed extraneous details and overlaid them, such that the driving wheel centres are aligned.

The front ends of the two classes look very similar, the key difference being that the leading wheels of the 'Sir Daniel' are set 10” further back whereas, at the back, the frames are shorter, with the trailing wheels closer to the drivers. Overall, the 16 foot wheelbase of the 'Sir Daniel' was increased to 17' 6” in the 'Queen' class, the extra length improving stability at high speed. The relative proportions of boiler and firebox also changed, with the Queen having a shorter boiler (by 6”) but a lengthened firebox (increased by 1 foot)

I was quite surprised to see how similar these two engines, with original dates around 10 years apart, had become, after their re-builds. Later, they became even more similar, when the open splashers were filled in and the driving wheel springs on the Sir Daniels were moved below the footplate, like the Queens. Of course, there were numerous detail differences, some of which depended on whether individual engines were re-built at Swindon or Wolverhampton.

In summary, I can see that I could make a model of a 'Sir Daniel' by using exactly the same methods that I used for 'Queen'. At the moment, I feel tempted but concerned that the two would end up looking too similar! If I do tackle a 'Sir Dan', I shall have to choose a prototype with significant differences from my existing model but, if anyone else is thinking of having a go, it should be quite straightforward and I'll be interested to see the result

'Queen' class at North Leigh

For an UPDATE - see my 3D model of 'Sir Daniel'

Mike