ajax drawings help

[donut]

Having returned to AJAX by Dick Simmonds and this hobby after many years ,I find that some of the drawings have faded from damp and time. I purchased them from Fred Stone (I seem to remember a tin foot and him telling me he worked with LBSC on the railway) together with all the castings etc. Can anyone help with the loan/hire or copy of the drawings, in particular No4? as I cannot see the measurements for the pumps.

[steamjohn248]

I've still got the Drawings for Freds HERCULES (somewhere), aren't they the same only with two more (or less) wheels?
He lived in Erith I recall and operated out of a shed in his Garden, boiler making and I think a foundry but not sure about the latter. I bought my stuff from him in about 64 and took it all to sea with me. (Aircraft Carriers had wonderful workshops!).

John

[durhambuilder]

You can get snippets of the drawings on the reeves website,
shop.ajreeves.com/ajaxachilles-axlepump-castings-3257-p.asp

[mbrown]

Glad to see recollections fo Fred Stone here. He did indeed live in Erith and took over Dick Simmonds's business. He had been shunter on the railway - the Southern, I think, although he was too young to have worked with LBSC - and lost a leg when he got it trapped in some points and a wagon ran over it. When I started model engineering as a teenager in the mid 1960s his shop at 5 South Road (now redeveloped) was only a short bike ride away and I was in there most weekends. He realised I hadn't much cash and was only too happy to sell me 3" of rod or bar instead of the full 12". I was building a "Southern Maid" in 2.5"g and (having sold my old Hornby Dublo to raise the money) he built me a boiler for £25.00. It's still on the model - which turned into a very frelance 4-6-0 - in my wokrshop now. Sometime around 1973, I think, he sold up to Reeves and retired to Norfolk. I guess he must be dead by now.

Fred was a real character - very down to earth but warm hearted to a beginner like me. His shop was a series of sheds with a "trade counter" at the front, piled high with metal, boxes of castings and odd bits of half-completed locos all covered in dust so it was hard to see what was there. Behind that was the workshop with just one lathe and a few other machine tools, and adjoining was the shack where he brazed boilers - often with a 5pt blowlamp even into the 1970s. He always regarded the boiler as the "heart" of the loco and enjoyed boilermaking more than anything, but he built a number of complete locos for customers. I remember him showing me a beautiful multi-point mechanical lubricator which delivered a drop to each of a dozen points - I think it had a swash-plate to drive each pump in turn.

They don't make them like Fred any more, sad to say.

[donut]

Thanks for the replies, reeves is a help for the pumps and castings they supply. Fred Stone as well as selling me all the castings made me a boiler for AJAX as I was (and still am) very much a beginner. I still have it and the certificate of test that came with it. He made the castings in the foundry `out the back`, they are of good quality-- the pump stay milled very well the other day; my first attempt after 40+ years! but the machines have been kept reasonably rust free in all that time.
As mbrown says `the don`t make `em like old Fred any more`; in fact that seems to apply to all walks of life--- maybe its a getting old thing!