Victorian

The only control was to shout at the Driver! That might have been easier on the soft roads of the time than today's hard surface. It may not be a co-incidence that the red flag act came the year after Aveling's exploit of driving his engine through central London. Steam engines were not universally popular and indeed it's recounted that Aveling met Charles Dickens, no less, "out with his two dogs" at the foot of Gad's Hill leaving Rochester. It's not recorded what was said, but Dickens had a private tunnel under the road to his garden which Aveling would have crossed with his 25 ton ensemble! Here's the remains of what could even be the same engine, Aveling No. 115, today. Note the massive perch bracket on which the front axle pivoted. This is likely to be the oldest surviving mechanically propelled road vehicle in UK and third oldest in the world, notwithstanding the motion from Gurney's 'Steam Drag' which pre-dates them all. (The others are Tuxford's engine in Sweden (1858) and Aveling No. 53 (1863) in Australia, which is virtually identical to the engine shown above).

This is a 10mm scale (Gauge 1) Aveling 'fifth wheel' engine from c.1864. This is a 10HP engine with chain drive and steered from the front using a 'disk cutter' guiding wheel to turn the front axle. This awkward arrangement perhaps had something to do with a requirement to have a man walking out front. Aveling himself drove one of these engines to Wales (where this engine was found) via Central London in 1863. The roads of the time didn't object to the disc cutter digging into the surface!!! The model is R/C using similar 3D printed components to the tram engine illustrated above. Parts of this engine exist in a shed in Northamptonshire and a similar relic also exists in Australia.

Fantastic find Sir Douglas! It has the look of a Clayton about it and I wonder if the records held at Reading would reveal anything? This drawing shows the similarities (Duplex cylinders, stepped down second shaft gear, what could be the inverted 'V' horn bracket:

There were very few “scale perfectionists” before 1914. In those years, only Carson and Butcher paid any attention to true scale in Gauge2, with Bing / Bassett Lowke belatedly realising they might be on to something when they released ‘Saint George” in 1913 in a modestly accurate form. Perhaps even this was a convenience in order to get a long pot boiler in this ‘low pressure’ design. Which leaves the original topic: what is the 4-4-0 at the top of this thread? It’s similar to Carson, but not Carson. Could it be a B-L kit of parts? Is it even Gauge 2, as supposed? If the original poster is still here, perhaps he could measure the back to back on the tender wheels? It should be 45-46mm for Gauge2. It would great to see another Precursor out on the circuit. Carson’s model is a superb runner but prone to all those Edwardian fallibilities of burner flare-ups and tiny water capacity far exceeded by a vast fuel tank. A set of frames would not be difficult to come up with in Cad using my Carson as a model. The boiler could be a modern ‘C’ type with chicken feed burner and an axle pump, giving us the first ‘modern’ G2 locomotive capable of running 30 min slots, something that was never achieved back in the day. I think Greenly would approve. Here’s the Carson in action: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zpb3fe9ug2wg2imox9v97/IMG_0824-1.MOV?rlkey=jjldkao8rvv6vkl152cyepd9b&dl=0

Wow. That looks so fragile! I once had a day shunting trucks with 'Blue Circle', courstesy of owner Mick Smith. It's amazing how big, and mischevous, trucks really are! And 'Blue Circle' is waay bigger than any steamroller.

I find this a very interesting discussion. I don’t think there’s much evidence of ‘gauges’ in the floor train era and equally, German producers would have been equally likely to use imperial, or metric before about 1890. However, the fact that continentals used centre to centre measurements seems incontrovertible. Maybe apocryphally or not, this seems to be how American Standard Gauge arose when US producers read about Gauge 2 being 54mm and ended up with 1 1/8” ! So we will never know, but it’s quite likely that G2 started as 2 imperial inches in the modern sense, became 54 mm centre to centre, and was Greenly-used back to 2” (but not 50.8mm !) David

Just reading back about the scale discussion, 2" gauge models were made to 7/16" / ft, which comes out at 1:27.4. The Carson Precursor shown above has a driving wheelbase of 4.45", fairly close to 10' full size on this scale. Carson models were amongst the very few built to actual scale before 1914. The track gauge was always 2", never a metric quivalent, and so you don't have the Gauge 1 45mm / 1 3/4" dichotomy. Which is little comfort since there's no source of G2 track today apart from Lionel, who bizzarrely chose 2" for their 'Hogwarts Express' train set!

Sorry to come late to the topic but I can confirm this was intended to be a steam model. It's very similar to Carson's G2 Precursor of which I've never seen another example. Here it is This engine is a superb runner with original Smithies boiler, Here's a pic of the frames and cylinder block. You can see similarities, but they are not identical. B-L bought Carson's stock in 1913 and went on offering parts for some of the models. This cylinder block was common to many Carson G1/2 models. The empty boiler shel simply means that the inner Smithies boiler is missing. Here's what it's like: (After reversing 100 years of crude alterations, this boiler meets modern standards and steams well.) I hope you get to complete your model. G2 locos are rare and there's always room for another one!

Sorry to come late to the party but only just stumbled across this thread! Here's Aveling's No. 253 (or 314?) in 10mm scale Gauge 1, with a Seaham chaldron: This is a motorised R/C model with an ABC gearbox and single Lipo in the tender. It's a mixture of etch brass and 3D print in SLS nylon. The working gears are 3D printed and driven via the chain which is commercial nylon. The prototype is similar to the Grays chalk quarry loco shown at the top of this thread and was discovered (parts of) buried in a coal mine in 1992. Here it is today: The chauldron is one piece SLS nylon print. This loco never shunted chauldrons in real life: it's last deployment was at Golden Hill, Staffordshire where it was converted to a winding engine.

Amongst the 'Cinderella Lots' at the end of last weeks' SAS auction were several rakes of Gauge 2 coaches and an unusual rail car with trailer. A rather nice set of scale length LNWR 57' coaches in Bassett Lowke's modular constructional style got my attention and in the absence of any other bids I also went home with a rake of 5 crude - looking GW coaches and a strange motorised rail car. Here's the GW rake: With a Brighton engine?? Read on... It turned out the carriages had been very crudely overpainted, but underneath was highly skilled metal construction, soldered tinplate running on sprung bogies with equalisation and seperate axleboxes. It's actually a very nice rake indeed, but sooo heavy! So the question is: who made them? The coaches are Collett pattern, introduced in the 1920's, and so cannot date from the Gauge 2 timeframe of 1900 - 1917. Most likely, they are 20's or 30's. The use of commercial components like wheelsets and buffers argue to a time when these were still available. Given that they are to 7/16" scale, they are definitely Gauge 2, not undersize Gauge 3 or something. And the builder must have been very serious indeed to cut out all those windows. (Initially I thought they might have been pressed, but vintage expert Nick Oddy soon disabused that view!). They are hand made and soldered. So it seems to me that they were very likely to have been written up somewhere and the purpose of the post is to ask if anyone has recollection of a pre-war article that might be related? There's a video here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s26sbcfugs7dtdvho719q/Video-06-11-2023-15-27-54.mov?rlkey=9pz7mwosxgk8hoj0cjle60v25&dl=0 Oh, and the Brighton engine? Well it turns out that 'Abergavenny' (C. Butcher & Co., Watford, 1911) is the only loco in my G2 stud heavy enough to pull them, with it's modern '540' motor and Lithium batteries. But one coach roof carries unmistakeable specs of steam oil, so what Gauge 2 live steamer were they built for? It must have been a big loco - a Carson 'Great Bear' perhaps? More about the rail car later ...

That's a very interesting point. Greenly was around at the time of the Decapod (1903). I wonder if there was talk of an articulated version? He's quick to say in his article "of course there are no articulated locomtives of standard gauge on our greater railways" but could the Great Eastern have considered the idea? Thanks for the kind comments!

Here's Henry Greenly's Gauge 2 "Articulated Shunting Engine" in full cry this morning with a recently acquired rake of Bassett Lowke Great Northern coaches. This engine appears to the one described in the November, 1911 edition of 'Models, Railways and Locomotives'. It was intended as a testbed for the then topical 'dual motor' setup which was intended to improve the performance of clockwork models. The idea never really caught on and I'm not aware of any dual clockwork models surviving today. Greenly hedged his bets in 1911 by making it big enough to house a contemporary accumulator, and idea that he never carried through as far as I can see. Here's the model as appearing at the time: The model was based on the contemporary Great Northern 'L1' 0-8-2 tank engine, which Greenly would have been familiar with having published an article on them in the previous August's edition of 'MR&L'. There's no evidence that he finished the model beyond the stage shown in the photograph and he himself suggests that he had only borrowed the 'Jupiter' mechanisms to power it. I'm of the view that the model shown in Greenly's photograph and that now running on my track are indeed one and the same. As you can see, the model has been expertly restored and painted prior to my acquiring it by persons unknown - I'd dearly like to know who this was. When the model came to me it had been fitted with a nicely made but inoperable 0-8-2 chassis and as you can see in the photo fitted with condensing pipes and other details from the L1. As with many Greenly designs it's somewhat overscale, being closer to 1/2" than Gauge 2's 7/16" / ft. The bunker is also much longer than the prototype, presumably to allow room for the projected lead acid accumulator. The drawing in Greenly's 1911 article allowed the articulated chassis to be reproduced and the structure inside the loco body matched the drawing exactly, allowing the original 'end pivot' design the be used. The chassis, wheels and gearboxes were all 3D printed in SLS Nylon and fitted with ball bearing 80 Turn 'Surpass' 540 size motors. Silver steel axles run in ball bearings, themselves fitting in hornguides printed in one piece with the frame and supported by coil springs. The motors are wired in parallel and driven by a single 20A R/C speed controller. Power comes from a pair of 5Ah '26650' LiPo cells giving 8.4v and the radio is conventional 2.4Ghz R/C. All this makes for an extremely powerful model and it has been demonstrated hauling 40 Gauge 2 wagons! The recently acquired rake of Gauge 2 GN coaches are themselves described in the May, 1910 edition of 'MR&L' and provide a fitting (and heavy) load for the Greenly engine. With these attached the motors combined draw 2A, giving a run time of more than 2Hrs and a continuous power over 16W at close to 1.5 mph. All of which demonstrates that the dual motor clockwork idea, while commendable, was not the future for model railways! If only Greenly could see this now! There's a video here:

Almost a year now and 'Saint George' is finally showing promise. Here it is today, having fine tuned the vapouriser (uptake wick overstuffed) and controlled the oil flow from the enormous tank in the smokebox: It's running 5-10 minutes between 'blow ups' and while the cylinders are quite leaky, it's almost OK (There's no packing in these 'low pressure' models). This may well be the best run that the little engine has made for 100 years. Note that the two Carette G2 'GW Style' coaches came to me red with rust and half full of cement! They've been treated with Phosphoric acid and wrapped in CAD generated vinyl, painstakingly hand cut for the window apartures. The remains of the original litho print are still present for the benefit of any future archaeologist who wants to peel the vinyl back! The loco cab sides and tender will be treated in the same way. Video here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/0hz7nzekp1s72x4c2zsou/IMG_3107.MOV?rlkey=tvdf5lkd0r0ogae0cd08vrwha&dl=0

To answer my own question, I discovered at G1 North that David Mills (Sixteen Mills) does an excellent kit for G1: Notice the 'grainy timber' effect on the baulks, which are actually laser cut MDF. Altogether a very pleasing results. David does several other tippers as well. See http://www.sixteenmills.co.uk/

Here's a scene on the long - lost London & Birmingham, taken yesterday in Bakewell, Derbyshire. Courtesy of the Yorkshire group of G1MRA, I was able to take over a beautiful little yard at one corner of the huge 'Ridings' layout at yesterday's 'Gauge 1 North' to stable some L&BR stock. From L to R, the locos are Bury 0-4-0 (raising steam), 2-2-2 Sharpie 'Odin' and 2-2-2 Patentee 'Harvey Combe'. Another Bury 0-4-0 stands on the shed road. The passenger stock is early LNWR including the 1857 brake discovered by Mike and Bob Williams in a Towcester farmyard and the 'Queen Adelaide' saloon as preserved in the NRM. Goods stock is c. 1850, mostly from engravings in S. C. Brees, 'Railway Practice'. The locos and goods stock are 3D printed in SLS Nylon, as is Queen Adelaide's saloon. Other carriages are in etched brass. Here's the express passenger out on the line: (The Sharpie is brand new in 1846 and on test prior to delivery to Denmark, where it is to become the first engine in that country. 'Harvey Combe' is acting as pilot because the whole thing is unnoficial - the little 2-2-2 never got to run on a service train so far as we know). Sorry to have to own up that the locos are not live steam - ultrasonic nebulisers run all day and no meths is involved! Sincere thanks to Peter Vincent and the Yorkshire Group for allowing me to occupy an entire corner of their layout.