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Tretheake Mill Railway - our locomotives Ferrier's Steam Engine |
| Its all Roger
Christy's fault really as he sowed the seeds of an idea some years ago, that
we should go halves in the acquisition of a 3.5 or 5 inch gauge steam engine
that would run on trestle track and pull a few passengers. Through my main railway interest - that of exhibiting a 3 Rail Hornby Dublo 00 gauge layout, which I built soon after I retired, I received an invite to a 7¼ inch gauge garden railway. A group of friends meet there about once a month for a "Running Day" when rides are given to friends and visitors and on other days for construction and maintenance purposes. I was immediately hooked on the scale due to its operating potential, real signalling system, viaduct and tunnel in a superb setting, and became one of the gang and joined the 7¼ Gauge Society, a National organisation. Shortly afterwards they held their AGM Festival, which luckily that year was at Pecorama in South Devon. I attended and became convinced that owning my own loco was achievable. So last September I attended the next AGM Festival - in Scotland - where I located a suitable engine for sale. Its home then was in Cumbria, where it was built about 5 years ago, and the owner/builder needed the space to start another one - his fifteenth! On the way home from Scotland I viewed and test drove it and we subsequently did a deal. It was delivered a week later to the Tretheake Mill Railway, where it is now stabled, and where the photo was taken. It is a quarter scale model of a French Decauville locomotive, an industrial shunting engine first seen and photographed about 25 years ago working in a Greek brickworks. Other locos were later discovered in a dilapidated state and also photographed and these were subsequently published in the Model Engineer (ME) magazine. A set of drawings based on these prototypes were made and published, and the model constructed from those drawings, which also appeared in the 'ME'. My initial requirements were for 'something which I could transport in my Vectra Estate', and it does that with ease - it is small enough to fit into the boot only, including its associated driving trailer. This is the only significant way in which the model differs from the prototype, as the latter carried its only water supply in its side tanks, whereas the model has a 3 gallon tank below the drivers seat - a system common in this gauge. Boiler capacity is 1/2 gallon and the side tanks take 2 gallons, which is used as ballast for additional adhesion only. A normal day's running consumes about a large bucket of coal and when empty the loco weighs about 1 cwt. It steams at 85 psi max and has 1.5 inch diameter cylinders. The builder named it "Asterix" after a French cartoon character - short and strong - and as far as I am aware is the only one ever built. It runs beautifully and pulls 5 adults up a 1 in 100 gradient - on dry rails that is - and gives myself and others a great deal of pleasure. |