3.5" King class

[JonL]

I've recently been given a 3.5" King by a friend who sadly passed away. It's largely complete with a commercial boiler but doesn't have a tender.

Does anyone know how many different people made drawings for a King class? I want to buy a set to make sure I'm as close as possible to the makers intention. I want this to be a really nicely made locomotive and want things just so.

Thanks, Jon

To clarify I'm not looking for sellers, I'm looking to see how many different people drew them in the first place.

[John Baguley]

Hello Jon,

So far as I know, the only 3.5" King drawings are the ones by H P Jackson. These were taken over by Clarksons of York and I believe are now sold by Blackgates Engineering. I've got a set of the original blueprints.
John

[millman]

John beat me to it ! The only ones I have come across in 3.5 are the Jackson ones and as John says they are sold by Blackgates.

[ettingtonliam]

Well thats probably true for a 3 1/2" King, but there are others in 5" and 7 1/4" gauge, just a case of scaling the drawing dimensions down to suit 3 1/2" gauge. Reeves, for example , market Trevor Shortland's version of King George V in 7 1/4" gauge. Didn't Neville Evans produce a series of drawings of GWR tenders? Keith Wilson?

[millman]

Yes loads of drawings for 5 inch kings, Keith Wilson done a king, if I remember correctly dear old LBSC done a king in 2 1/2 gauge, I believe it was called kingette, must have been a watchmaking job doing the two inside cylinders but as far as I know only the one in 3.5 gauge,

[JonL]

Thank you all for your help, I am very grateful.

[lesstoneuk]

Make sure the tender is actually a King tender. King tenders were slightly wider and the water fillers were in the back corners of the flat area behind the coal space.
Hall and Castle tenders had the water filler in the centre.

[John Baguley]

The H P Jackson drawings show the tender with a single central filler so perhaps he chose the wrong type!

John

[ettingtonliam]

Anyone care to be confident that no 'King' was ever matched with a 'Castle' or 'Hall' tender?

[nick952]

Early Kings had the "Double filler", later had the single filler.

This is explained on here (you'll need to scroll down quite a way):- www.gwr.org.uk/no-tenders.html

[oldnorton]

Super collection of images and good to see, thank you. Of surprise was the loading with massive slabs of coal in images from around 1905. The poor fireman must have had a big job resizing that!

[jma1009]

I think that the H P Jackson 3.5”g GWR King are very poor drawings, and you need to know a lot about the original locos to make sense of the drawings.

Laurie Joyce made a superb example in 3.5”g.

Bristol Temple Meads, Paddington, and Snow Hill each had examples in 3.5”g built by Bassett Lowke.

I could write an awful lot about the H P Jackson 3.5”g design.

Just as a taster, the Jackson design has slide valves, and if you look at the exhaust pipes it is an absolute mess same as full-size!
The draughting is also pretty bad, compromised by the exhaust pipe work.

The axle boxes on the Jackson design have oil supply issues, and are not sufficient to deal with wear.

[JonL]

Ok, thank you Julian, thats very interesting. Currently the locomotive is a "Kit of parts", complete but not assembled so there may other parts missing, but now is the ideal time to incorporate improvements such as the axle box lubrication.