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A 5 inch gauge "Simplex" that came in recently as a part exchange for one of our Staffords. I first saw it out in Switzerland in summer, when Mrs P and I went over to the Internatioal Steam Festival at Le Bouveret - it was bit of a busman's holiday, we were delivering two new engines to customers out there but had plenty of time to drive on the super railway out there over the weekend.

If you have a look at the video we made of the weekend here, right at the beginning - in addition to seeing one of our FC7s towing the brand new Big Feldbahn we'd taken out to the steaming bays for the first time - you'll see this Simplex being readied for a day's running. Must say I was impressed by how well it went - mixing it with a lot of large, fast engines it ran like clockwork all the time we were there, notching up lap after (mile long) lap of the circuit.

Silver soldered copper boiler, 100psi working pressure, feed by injector and axle pump with auxiliary hand pump in the side tank. Cast iron cylinders with slide valves actuated by Walschaert's gear, screw reverser in the cab. Displacement lubricator beneath the cab floor with twin sight feeds in the cab.

It's in good mechanical order and runs very well (there's some video of it running in the yard here), boiler is in sound condition. A thoroughly well sorted engine (as it needed to be for Le Bouveret), it runs well notched up virtually to midgear, safety valves open and close in positive fashion, the injector and axle pump are reliable and fuss free.