7 1/4 inch gauge LMS "Duchess" with commercial boiler

An early stage 7 1/4 inch gauge LMS "Duchess" to the Jim Vass design, complete with new commercially-built CE-marked copper boiler.

Work to date is to a good standard and comprises:

• Erected frames with stretchers, buffer beams, horns, needle roller axleboxes and springs.
• Machined driving wheels and plain leading/traliing axles
• Front bogie assembled
• Trailing truck with machined wheelset
• Locomotive and tender sprung buffers
• Smokebox profiled, rolled and welded
• Inside/outside cylinder castings, unmachined
• Chimney, smokebox ring castings
• Flat profiled parts, including some motionwork
• CE-marked TIG-welded copper boiler by Steam Technology
• Set of drawings

Much work to do, but with a large amount of money already spent - the new boiler currently lists at over £12,000, the cylinder, wheel and other sundry castings at £3,000.

For those requiring inspiration to take on this most magnificent of prototypes in the impressive scale that 7 1/4 inch gauge provides - the finished engine and tender come out at over nine feet long, weighing over half a ton - there are pictures of "Queen Mary" which we sold back in 2018 in the archive here.

Partsn and castings for the locomotive are available from Horley Miniature Locomotives, who took over the Jim Vass range of designs some years ago.

As always, our friends at Model Engineers Laser stock a comprehensive range of high quality profiled parts for locomotive and tender.