Palmerston in 5inch gauge

[jgb7573]

Here is (hopefully) a picture of the frames and cylinders for a 5" model of Palmerston from the Festiniog Railway which I'm building. The picture was taken on the Ickenham and District Club stand at the ME exhibition a couple of years ago. No progress since then I'm afraid except for getting wheel casting made and part machined. The project is currently on hold awaiting time and space to work on it.



John B.

[Nexuas]

Nice progress. I am only a little concerned that yours looks very little like mine. I had trusted that Don Young had actually looked at the England engines prior to drawing GEORGE. The frame cut outs on yours are rather different to mine (even taking into account the slight error I made in making mine) and DY has relied on the boiler to make the join between the man frames and the rear drag box, unlike yours which has a frame around where the fire box will sit?

[jgb7573]

Hi Nexuas,

George is rather more like the England engines when first built (side tanks instead of saddle tanks etc.) whereas mine is intended to be closer to how they are now. Indeed I think DY based the George design quite closely on the three and one eighth inch gauge model 'Topsy' which was built in 1869 at the Boston Lodge works of the the FR. This model still exists and is based on the original England engines (go digging on the FR railway's website, in particular the Heritage Group Wiki. and you will find pictures of it).

My version is not intended to be a fine scale model of Palmerston at any particular time but I do want it to look like the current version. The frame cutouts, are fairly close to the current arrangement if I recall correctly. As for bolting the frames onto the front of the firebox, well this is how the England engines were well into the preservation era on the FR. All the power generated by the cylinders was transmitted through the main frames, the firebox, and the rear frames which were hung off the back of the firebox. And this is how George is. During the course of rebuilds, both Prince and Palmerston (the two working England engines) have had this feature removed. Prince has frames around the outside of the firebox and Palmerston has 'beams' which go from the front main frames, under the firebox and then back up to the rear frames. I decided I didn't like the beams under the firebox arrangement so went for the frames around the outside. So strictly speaking it's not correct, but it's what I fancied doing.

Oh and by the way, the b****y great angles along the top of the frames is sort of as current design too. On the full size they act as stiffeners for the frames and also as bearing surfaces for the main springs. Mine are a bit wide, and I'll be cutting them down when I get back work on the engine (sometime in the next 10 years?).

Don Young was a regular visitor to the FR and knew the engines in preservation well. I just don't think he intended George to be a model of them as they were then. He wanted something nearer the original 1863 design.

Hope this helps.

John

[davidimurray]

Hey guys

Just having a look through the images and stumbled over this thread. I worked in the drawing office at Boston Lodge as a draughtsman for a while and looking through the old drawings I noticed the difference in the frames. Asking around, the reason behind this is that when new boilers were required, the boiler inspector asked for a full analysis of the boiler considering all the loads and stresses placed on it while dragging the load through it. Rather than go through this complicated process the FR chose to add the frames instead, making the boiler no longer a load bearing member.

Cheers

Dave