First track run of 1/24th scale EAR Beyer-Garratt loco - 25/5/23

tac foley

tac foley

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Andrew Giffen, master model maker in 1/24th scale live steam and electric locomotives - mainly in 1/24th scale - came over to our track near Ramsey to give his recently completed Rhodesian RR Class 59 Beyer-Garratt its first run on a track. It had been run on rollers at home, but our track, with its wide sweeping curves, offered the opportunity to run it to test clearances of the various between the frames steam lines and so on, as well as the axle-driven water feed pump, and general running though points both facing and trailing.

For those unsure about odd scale, please remember that Southern Africa runs on metre gauge, but the Republic of South Africa runs on 3ft 6in - Cape Gauge. 45mm is near enough to both, and the Centurion Society of Model engineers in Cape Town has an extensive 45mm gauge track on which you can see a range of models - diesels and cars by Riekus Van der Westhuizen [see his Youtube site] and others. In this scale EVERYTHING has to be scratch-built.

The model is quite large and heavy.


 
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What a stunning piece of engineering. I'm assuming the length and weight measurements are for the whole train with the wagons included?

How many hours does something like that take to construct?
 
3 minutes of fame said:
What a stunning piece of engineering. I'm assuming the length and weight measurements are for the whole train with the wagons included?

How many hours does something like that take to construct?
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The length I quoted was for the loco alone. The gauge might be narrow, but the prototypes are far bigger than anything used here in UK, including the one-off LNER B-G. He is a professional modeller in live
steam from 16mm - 32mm/45mm gauge, up to10.25" gauge. This will be around 17 feet long and weigh in at about 2 tons.

1685263894713.png

He is currently build five Class 25NCs and 5" gauge rebuilt Merchant Navy. Even the Beyer-Garratts are batch-built, but typically take around 250 hours to build. Not cheap, needless to say.
 
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It appeared to be slipping, at times?

A trick of the video, or the length of the wheelbase, I wonder?

PhilP
 
Paul M said:
Cor! It's a lovely model. That must have taken some skill to build.
I see Michael Portaloo was on hand to watch! :giggle:
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Our railway is open to paying guests once a month on running days and by arrangement for parties and similar occasions. Yesterday we hosted two birthday parties - one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Guests cannot use our indoor facilities due to government rules on hosting controlled numbers of on-site guests and limiting access. If you are interested in finding out more, please look at out FB page - Fenland Light Railway - or the website fenlandlightrailway.co.uk. We are very quickly booked up for our sessions, and on-site numbers are strictly-controlled by government regulations.
 
Not wishing to cast doubt (or be a pedant!) on the weight or length of the loco, but doing a quick sleeper count and looking at the height of the running track compared to the length of the loco, it would appear to be closer to 4' in length. If it weighed 80lb, that's about the same as a 4' length of full size rail, which seems rather heavy, even for a scale steamer such as this. As an comparison, a Roundhouse steam Garret ( not a small loco by any standards) would be less than half the length and weight

Can I ask what government regulations prevent you from offering access to indoor facilities? I only ask, as we have a local privately owned 10" gauge railway with G Scale garden layout, which has indoor facilities, so I wondered what the restrictions were, in case they were inadvertently breaking them. Is it a local planning restriction?
 
3 minutes of fame said:
Not wishing to cast doubt (or be a pedant!) on the weight or length of the loco, but doing a quick sleeper count and looking at the height of the running track compared to the length of the loco, it would appear to be closer to 4' in length. If it weighed 80lb, that's about the same as a 4' length of full size rail, which seems rather heavy, even for a scale steamer such as this. As an comparison, a Roundhouse steam Garret ( not a small loco by any standards) would be less than half the length and weight

Can I ask what government regulations prevent you from offering access to indoor facilities? I only ask, as we have a local privately owned 10" gauge railway with G Scale garden layout, which has indoor facilities, so I wondered what the restrictions were, in case they were inadvertently breaking them. Is it a local planning restriction?
Click to expand...

I'm sure you are right on all counts, but you'd have to contact the association management who will acquaint you with control of access conditions that we are obliged to follow. Our indoor facilities are in our private club house, which is not open to the public.
 
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