Little 1014

At the beginning of 2010, the project had a visit from David Pollard (who already owns a spoke of 1014) and Frank Birchell from Cornwall. Between them they have found/inherited(?) a 5" gauge partially completed model of a County and they came to Didcot and the project group to ask for help in undertaking this task. Mike Cooper agreed, on receipt of a donation to funds!  The model is to be of 1014 with a double chimney, so it was suggested that we might set up a connection between the full size and 1/11th scale model, on the web site. 

This has been agreed, consequently a page relating to ‘Little 1014’ will report progress on the construction of the model.

David Pollard writes:

Just imagine.…. that you walked into a semi derelict timber garage and workshop in deepest rural Cornwall and discovered an amazing collection of miniature steam locomotives, traction & showman’s engines and various other part built miniatures, all wasting away in an endless time warp.

My very good friend Frank Birchall and I had heard rumours that a Cornish Fairground operator of yesteryear had constructed a collection of steam engines during his spare time and was entirely self taught. And here was the collection for real! His son was not the slightest bit interested in his late father’s collection, consequently the collection had remained dormant and rusting away for over ten years.

The collection included at least six locomotives, most of which were 7 ¼” gauge including a 9F, a large narrow gauge industrial saddle tank and a small standard gauge 0-4-2. Hidden away and looking very sad, was a 5” gauge Hawksworth County loco (rare in any miniature gauge ) roughly painted in Dulux green (except for a superb showman’s engine). Most of these engines had never moved out of the workshop where they were built - the constructor was only interested in building, not running his live steam miniatures. However, it is reported the County had run at one of the fairgrounds for public entertainment, although this is strange for it has no brakes!

I should mention that Frank is an octogenarian with a truly remarkable talent for mechanical engineering, despite being trained in electrical engineering at Metrovick. To this day, he normally builds a 7 ¼ “ gauge loco every year in a workshop no larger than 4 x 3 metres. He and his locos have a nationwide reputation for superb construction, free steaming and trouble free operation.

As a kid, I lived in Manchester and enjoyed the wonders of ex LMS, GC , LNER and standard class traction, but no GWR. However, I had a great uncle who lived in Worcester and on visits there, he would take me to Worcester Shed, where I saw magical GWR locos including, on occasion, Counties. It was ‘love at first sight’ for the Counties ……… sad but true! Eventually, upon moving ‘south’, I had a few more opportunities to see Counties, especially on holidays to Cornwall, before dieselisation replaced all steam.

However, my thoughts often went to this lonely 5” gauge County, facing an uncertain and unloved future in its wooden ‘coffin’, so I bought it some four years’ ago! A visit to Didcot in January 2010and meeting Richard Croucher and the superb ‘County of Glamorgan’ project team has kick started our enthusiasm to complete the little 1014…….. there are often challenges when the heart replaces common sense!

So, the following are the most immediate challenges:

Firstly, whilst our County will look very similar to ‘big sister’, because of the smallness of scale, the way of operating a miniature locomotive (for example, short hauls around a miniature track do not justify a super heater in this scale) and the unfortunate crudeness of construction of our loco, it would probably have been better and more cost/time effective to build a new County.

Secondly, when we started, we had no plans of this loco and despite the fantastic help from the Didcot 1014 group, we still have great difficulty in obtaining plans for certain key parts……the front bogie being one of the current ones, because the existing bogie is totally incorrect and does not even look right!

Lastly at the moment, our dream is to have little 1014 in full operation (perhaps at times on a temporary track at Didcot) and as a mobile PR aid for big sister. However, this steaming hinges on whether the current boiler can be restored to meet certification standards, because to buy a ‘one-off’ new boiler probably would be prohibitively expensive.

The loco is completely in bits! Frank has carried out partial restoration of the tender and is now concentrating on ‘working his magic’ with the boiler. Currently, I am trying to source bogie plans; the Didcot team do not have them because they have the real thing!

Our next report will reveal progress or not with the boiler and developments with other parts of our project. Needless to say, we would be delighted to hear from anybody interested or provide input, especially on bogie plans!

David Pollard (davidpollard@email.com)

Meanwhile - another County Project:

Gary Davies, one of the 'County Set' started making a 5''gauge county from scratch about two years ago and as he was also working on the full size project it proved most useful for securing information. As he lives in the County of Monmouth his model will be number 1020.

He obtained scale drawings of some of the parts from Peter Rich, who later passed all his drawings and patterns to Pete Thomes of Pollymodels who can supply many castings, as they are similar to his Grange class model.  Recently he finished machining the wheel castings supplied by them to the scale size 21 spoke pattern made by Peter Rich.

Completion is a long way off, but he has many parts awaiting final assembly, a bit like the big County.

14/07/2010 - Progress to date - rear view of locomotive frames, wheels, cylinders and tender frames. (Gary Davies)

14/07/2010 - view of front end showing buffer beam and cylinders and assorted smaller components. The quality of Gary's engineering is clearly evident here. (Gary Davies)

Two more live steam County projects have come to our attention, one of which a locomotive built by Paul Archer to 3½" gauge is complete and working - we hope to provide some images of this machine in the near future.

The second is a 3½" gauge model being built by Peter Aldridge, which came to light when he approached Mike Cooper at Didcot for permission to measure 1014's double chimney. He states that he had just finished a LNWR Jumbo and a member of his club suggested he might care to complete some bits of a County he had acquired at a show, including a new professionally built boiler. In the event, he had to make new frames, axles etc., re-machine the driving wheels, completely remake the bogie, profile the cylinders, make new covers, valves and pistons. He will also have to remake the tender, cab etc.
He intimates that we may finish ours before he finishes his!

Four views of his County under construction are shown below: