Sold September 2008 Back to Archive

The grubby appearance of this early stage is misleading, there is some good work gone into an LNER V1 to Martin Evans' "Enterprise" design for Gresley's large, three cylinder 2-6-2 tank locomotive.

Work to date comprises a rolling chassis with main driving wheels machined and quartered, crank axle, gunmetal axleboxes and horns (nicely done - note the correct fishbellied flanges on the axleboxes in picture "e"), and a set of three piston valve cylinders machined. There is a box of miscellaneous unmachined castings including the leading and trailing wheels, valve rod guides and various other Os & Ss, along with a part-machined set of connecting and coupling rods.

Quite a number of V1 models are built up as two cylinder engines rather than three. It cuts out some work and doesn't, in my opinion, make a deal of difference to performance on the track. However, the added technical interest of conjugated gear for driving the inner valve is a very appealing part of the design (and here speaks a man who has spent time this week working on a super V2 with the same cylinder and valve layout).

This will build up into a large, powerful locomotive. I had one some years ago, paintwork was getting tired but the engine was beautifully built, it went particularly well - pictures in the archive. Work to date is to a good standard, what is there needs to be stripped, cleaned and painted before progressing further.

There are no drawings but these, along with the remaining castings are available from Blackgates Engineering.