Deeside Railway Locomotives

[M Wright]

Hi, I have got the urge to build a model of a locomotive that ran close to our house in the 1860s.This is a loco built by Hawthorn and is a long boilered 0-4-2.  There is a good drawing of the locomotive that was produced by the late Hugh Gordon however it like many drawings does not have a front view.  So my first question to  you all is given that the coaching stock of the railway was 8 feet wide, how wide do you think a locomotive of this type and date was?  I have one  works drawing from a decade later - a Sharp Stewart 2-4-0 built for the Furness Railway in the late 1860s. The distance between its buffer centres is 5 feet 10 inches and its buffer beam is 7 feet 6 inches wide. The width over the footplates is 7 feet 3 inches.  The locomotive I am going to build though has outside cylinders, does anybody know the width of the early Beattie LSWR locos since they are of a similar type and build date?

[M Wright]

I had hoped some reader would have this sort after information.  How wide were locomotives in the Victorian era?  Looking on the web and flipping through the standard texts (Ahrons) whilst length and height are usually reported, width rarely is. Is that because most early drawings and prints for public consumption were side views?  3/4 views only seem to have become popular as the 19th century got into its final decades. I surmise it was only with the faster photographic emulsions that lineside photography slowly took over from  formal side on presentation. Was it also  that this was a period of cultural change. The static posed loco was losing interest as the working study of power and movement interested the viewer? However this does not help me. I still would welcome views on width, also when did buffer height and spacing start to settle into a standard?  Replies please.  Thanks in anticipation.

[Nick Holliday]

I had hoped some reader would have this sort after information.  How wide were locomotives in the Victorian era?  Looking on the web and flipping through the standard texts (Ahrons) whilst length and height are usually reported, width rarely is. Is that because most early drawings and prints for public consumption were side views?  3/4 views only seem to have become popular as the 19th century got into its final decades. I surmise it was only with the faster photographic emulsions that lineside photography slowly took over from  formal side on presentation. Was it also  that this was a period of cultural change. The static posed loco was losing interest as the working study of power and movement interested the viewer? However this does not help me. I still would welcome views on width, also when did buffer height and spacing start to settle into a standard?  Replies please.  Thanks in anticipation.

There are at least two useful sources of drawings for locos of this early era - The Locomotives of the Stockton and Darlington Railway, by T R Pearce, published by the HMRS, and Bradley's LSWR Locomotives - Early Classes from Wild Swan. The former has GA drawings for a couple of Hawthorn locos of the same era, but, they are inside cylindered, and the drawings are not to a recognisable scale, and difficult to interpret. The Bradley book has a number of GA's, including some outside cylindered locos, and have been reproduced at 7mm to the foot. For example Clyde, a 2-4-0 class, has buffers at 6' 0" centres on a 7' 9" bufferbeam, with the cylinders being 7' 10" overall width, its cab being 7' 2" wide. The more familiar Beattie 2-4-0T well tank had a similar bufferbeam, but the width over cylinders was only 7' 6 1/2".

[M Wright]

Hi, thank you Nick for that useful information. I have started to draw up a front view.  It does'nt look bad with a 7 foot  6 inch beam and buffers at 5 foot 10 inch centres. The boiler  has to be about 3 feet 9 inches over the claddding and that makes the smokebox  between 4 feet and 4 feet 3 in diameter.  Once I have decided on the  the distance beween the frames, and the width over the wheel faces I can see how much clearance is left for the crosshead and then of course see if in the over piston faces can be contained within the 7 ' 6" of the buffer beam. From the only piece of information available - the picture on the cover of Parr's The Royal Deeside Line and photos I think they might have extended outside this.  Consequently I would then have to narrow the loco from 7' 6" to 7'. In the end if there are inadequate drawing one just has to guess.