City of Truro

If you've not got Mike Sharman's "The Crampton Locomotive" then you'll want to get it. It's got quite a comprehensive section on the C&A

6-2-0s. Amazing devices. The prototype - the "John Stevens" - was even odder than the production batches, if you'll credit that. 0-10-0, I think.

Yup. Sounds like a wonderful idea.

"Andrew Robert Breen" wrote

You could then use P4 standards for an HO model. Who's going to worry about a missing 0.5mm? :-)

I think that by mentioning P4 you've just answered that question :)

Salvé

Didnt Ian Rice do an article on ictorian oddities some years ago in which photos of his models where displayed, some of those babies where really strange! Valé Beowulf

Mike Sharman? One the hobby's innovators. We have him to thank for compensation - although others have introduced different methods, his Flexichas system was the pioneer. Also he was the first to transfer weight from the tender to the rear axle of the locomotive.

Almost certainly Sharman - his articles in RM in the mid-70s were an absolute revelation.

Nice bit of Sharmanism here:

Nice. I like the early stuff. I think his were the first Cramptons I saw modelled.

Salvé>

It may well have been Mr Sharman, there was one model which stuck in my minds eye, which was a loco with an oscillating crank driving both axles which was centered between the two axles in question, it was a superb model :) Beowulf

I think that was also one of Crampton's patents. He wasn't just into big boilers and speed, but also into balancing.

"Christopher A. Lee" wrote

I've seen Sharman's layout of Victorian curiosities, and he seems to go for the oddest prototypes - plus I'd like to know where/how he tracks down the drawings to build these things! The indirect crank thing - are you sure that wasn't the model of one of the GWR's early botched experiments? Brunel had a thing about limiting piston speed and axle loads, believing (wrongly) that adhesion was not an issue if the train was adequately light, so two test locos were built, at least one of them by Harrison who got the blame when it proved hopeless. One was Thunderer, which indeed had inboard cylinders and cranks which geared up to the driving wheels so simulated a bigger wheel (and proportionately smaller TE), while the "Grasshopper" - possibly a nickname - had 10' driving wheels driven direct. Both also separated driving wheels from boiler by mounting on separate but articulated chassis with coupled steam pipes, like a crude forbear of the Garratt.

Sharman's certainly done Grasshopper - you have to marvel at how he did those spindly wheels and kept them concentric with such dainty spokes. The trouble is, Sharman works to such watchmaker standards on these locos that it scares people off from trying the same thing! I'd almost argue that Victorian little 'uns ought to be easier scratchbuild projects than a modern loco with all its rivets and pipework (plus the attendant grockles to count those rivets and tell you when you're wrong - no-one left alive to argue the toss about where Robert Stephenson put his nuts). Coaches are often only little boxes with a chain on each end. There are modellers of Victorian magnificence - I think of Gordon Gravett in 7mm - but I'd go back before even his 1860s interest, to the heroic period before fitted brakes and interlocked signals - at least the operation on a model would look clumsily prototypical.

Tony Clarke

There was a magazine called "The Engineer", which had drawings. These articles were used as the source for Ahrons' book "The British Steam Locomotive 1845 - 1925". It was originally published in 1927 but there have been several reprints.

No, it wasn't. If you look at the RCTS volumes 2 and 3, the broad gauge book and the one on the first absorbed engines, you will see that they inherited at least one from one of the West Midland lines - this was an E.B.Wilson design that was also sold to several other railways, looking a bit like a Manning Wardle 0-6-0 tank with a jackshaft instead of the centre driving axle. This is described, with a drawing, in Mike Sharman's book on Cramptons - it's from one of the Midland constituents AFAIR but it's the same off-the shelf engine.

Brunel's experience with steam engines was in ships, where the requirement was different.

Mike's earliest models weren't to the same standard as his later ones, but they were still fascinating. I'd never seen them attempted before.

But he's not the only one. The late Cyril Harper built a magnificent

7mm scale model of Hurricane which won a trophy at the Model Engineering Exhibition in the 1970s. His layout was of Wootton Bassett in broad gauge days.

Bill Salter did another very early, 7mm scale mixed gauge layout (Beagie Severn), running some very early engines, but nothing as weird as some of Mike's. Bill's layout was featured in a couple of episodes of Railway Modeller.

You might find the Broad Gauge Society pages interesting:

Nope. It was a Yorkshire engine - ended up on either the L&Y or the NER, can't recall which at present. _Albion_ was one of them. Certainly ran for

15+ years in original form and was accounted something of a success. The single "cylinder" ran transversely across the frame and held two vane-type pistons, which rotated in the cylinder to provide the motion.

The design of _Albion_ and her sisters (there were several - IIRC dispute over patent rights killed the breed..) was aimed at producing a balanced engine, not reducing piston speed.

Harrison: later chief engineer of the North Eastern, and a formidably talented bloke.

_Hurricane_

Mmmm. Main line-colliery line crossing in the 1860s: brakeless passenger trains behind those ultra-modernist Sharp Stewarts, Beyers and Fletchers one the main, and on the colliery Killingworth engines (which were still being built into the 1870s, remember!), Hackworths and maybe Hedley grasshoppers.. Hmm. Nice.

An excellent book. Everyone should have one, but they can't have mine.

That's one type of the period - and it's the Cramptonesque type. Patrick Stirling was IIRC the last to use the configuration in .uk, in the later

1850s, and oddly enough with outside cylinders. The oscillating crank engine, however, was something else:

which used an engine layout very similar to the stationary "Cambrian system" engines:

I'm mildly curious as to whether Aspinall, JOnes & Co. had any relation to the family of the great John Aspinall..

The dummy-shaft engines, by contrast, used conventional cylinders, driving onto the dummy shaft.

And it was a limited experiance. The engines for his ships had considerable design input from Thomas Lloyd, engineer-in-chief to the navy and arguably the most able engineer of his generation (certainly an equal to Brunel and Robert Stephenson).

Interesting. Thanks for the link.

"Christopher A. Lee" wrote

OK I stand corrected, though it's still a matter of record that Brunel was not an instinctive loco man and had to have his hands prised off the subject by wiser counsels such as Gooch.

As for wierd prototypes, I have the book The West Midland Lines Of The GWR and in it appears a frustratingly small photo of a loco built for one of the WMR's constituent companies around 1852 - might have been the Shrewsbury & Hereford. A 2-2-2, with inside cylinders but outside Stephenson gear, with pairs of eccentrics on the ends of the axles and the motion pivoting to the inside, the exact opposite of how the GWR did valves on Halls, Prairie tanks, etc. That too looks like a serious modelling challenge as you can't fake motion like that.

Given how successful designs like the Shay and Climax were on US lines, it's struck me as odd that the Brits seemed uninterested in geared locos for freight and shunting work. About the only steam design that went for it was a Sentinel that apparently used the Doble engine designed for car use, with a flash boiler. I've got a BackTrack article on it somewhere, BT being good on discussing "might have been" traction.

Tony Clarke

Gooch was amazing. He became the first CME of the GWR at the age of

1. His engines were streets ahead of contemporary standard gauge engines - he took full advantage of the 7ft gauge to build large boilers, use generous bearings etc.

He'd previously been a draftsman for Robert Stevenson.

Apart from his valve motion, he was probably the first to use standardisation of parts, giving templates to the manufacturers of his locomotives.

There were a couple of Dean 2-2-2s like that.

I've always fancied a Jenny Lind 2-2-2, but these are more orthodox. The Werry Middling had a few of these.

I've got the book you mention but my collection is packed away in boxes at the moment.

Shays and Climaxes weren't the usual switcher. They were typically used on lightly laid, tightly curved logging lines. My first Shay sounded like a 3-cylinder pacific going like the clappers until it came round a bend at walking pace.

They were geared down to give a very high tractive effort but a low speed, and not really useful for much else. The British equivalent would be the class 08 which is only 350 horse power, but geared right down. And even these are faster than the typical Shay.

Shays had an offset boiler with ballast weights to balance it.

There was actually a Shay running at Bilston.

Tried a few times in .uk - last usage with link motion was by Dean in the

1890s, with No.9 (4-2-4T, then 2-2-2), though Beames used a similar layout with Walscherts gear outside in the 1920s for a batch of Prince of Wales' 4-6-0s. Inside cylinders with outside gear were not rare elsewhere in europe - the Swedes, IIRC, used the arrangment, and it was common in Italy.

Again, not rare - geared engines were used in UK from the beginning (Trevithick's engines, like Hedley's and Stephenson's first two, not to mention the various Chapman/Buddle machines, were all geared). In the middle-Victorian period small geared shunters were common: people like Boulton were great producers of geared engines, and Chaplin's vertical- boilered engines were notably common. Then there's all the traction- engine derived machines - Aveling and Porter et seq., plus all kinds of odd anomalies. Geared engines were probably never out of production - let alone use - from the 1850s onwards. A look through Lowe is pretty instructive on this (as well as fascinating, and filled with terrinly appealing prototypes!)

Very, very intriguing, especially as it's not far from where I live (in fact, my mother grew up in Bilston). The S&L works (British Steel Corporation by that time) closed when I was about 5, having used diesels on its internal system for a good few years by then.

David Belcher