Model Railway Engines By J E Minns w/ DJ 120 illustrations 1969-1973

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Introduction

THE HISTORY OF THE STEAM LOCOMOTIVE stretches from the late eighteenth century to roughly the middle of the twentieth. At a time when practical space travel is a normality, it is already fantastic to look back on machines so incredibly crude in conception. In fifty years, people will be trying to explain to their incredulous children that for a century and a half men rushed about filling metal contained on wheels with water, lit a fire underneath, waited an hour and a half for steam to be produced and then careered off at speeds in excess of a hundred mph - with smoke, steam and cinders flying out of a hole in the front of the machine, totally obscuring their line of vision.

Crude though they were, and never reaching an overall efficiency of more than nine and a half per cent, steam locomotives, like no other method of transport, continued to captivate and absorb designers, employees and enthusiasts. At all stages of development they were larger than life, almost living, machines, presenting an image of great power and beauty. Since railways affected social conditions, politics and business it is little wonder that men have spent millions of hours making both working and non-working models of their favourite locomotive prototypes.

At first, it was cheaper and safer to make these models purely and simply to test an idea. Then one went on to the full-size engine from the model. Today this is normal practice with ships, aircraft, car bodies, Electrically-powered models soon became available, and the great period between the 1890s and the 1930s of vast and yet more vast and elaborate layouts began engulfing otherwise totally sane households all over the world. This period also encompassed enthusiasts with the time, land, madness and money to create complex miniature railways with locomotives weighing a ton and a half, and capable of pulling a hundred passengers at the slightest excuse, whether they liked it or not.

Thus it is that locomotive models fall into five categories, namely those built for development purposes; for exhibition or patent purposes; amateur or 'scratch' built models; commercially available brass, cast-iron or tinplate, steam, clockwork and electric toys; and miniature or large-gauge models. They survive where their prototypes have long since been destroyed, in some cases passing on a wealth of information about the past and in others simply preserving the sculptural beauty inherent in locomotive design, or the personality of the builder.

Locomotives are described or grouped by their wheel arrangements. Whereas one talks in terms of tonnage with shipping, thrust in aviation and so on, a locomotive with four wheels, that is to say two leading, two driving and no trailing, is termed a 2-2-0; a large American articulated locomotive which might have four leading, eight driving and no trailing wheels on the leading frame, and the same but the opposite way round on the trailing frame, is termed a 4-8-8-4 locomotive. These wheel arrangements were further categorized into classes, the most famous of which were the 4-4-2 'Atlantic' and the 4-6-2, 'Pacific'.

Most locomotives consist basically of a horizontal boiler with a firebox at the driving end and a smokebox and chimney at the other, supported on two or more frames to which cylinders are fixed. The cylinders drive the wheels round by a system of long jointed connecting-rods attached either to their axle or to a spoke. In this book a series of contemporary models has been used to illustrate briefly the historical development and to pay a small tribute to one of the greatest modelling stories in history.

It must be added, in conclusion, that any steam-driven machinery has utterly personal and readily recognizable characteristics, both good and bad. Locomotive drivers used to say that even with two identical designs of locomotive, built consecutively, each would behave quite differently under steam, and the man and his engine had to work as one. This is also the case with models - each having its own good and bad moods - some would say even opinions! One man, after spending three and a half years building his engine, was seen to have such a furious argument with it when getting to know it under steam that he never spoke to it again and got to know his wife instead space craft and so on. In those days it was entirely new.

As the early developmental stages (between the 1780s and the 1820s) passed into the period of the widespread growth of railways (between 1830 and 1860), models were made by locomotive companies and professional instrument-makers as trophies and for sales promotion exhibition purposes. The skill necessary to make such complex, accurate pieces of miniature machinery was still a rarity, and few private or amateur engineers built models.

Between the 1860s and the 1890s amateur enthusiasts everywhere began building models, and, recognizing the popularity of the subject, hundreds of toy manufacturers all over the world began to turn out steam, clockwork and hand-pushed models of the older locomotives. Earlier, locomotives had been produced perhaps because people recognized the commercial value of pandering to sentiment or to the nostalgia of a middle-aged director longing for the old long-funnelled locomotives of his youth; certainly it is fair to say that during that period commercial models represented prototypes of up to thirty years old.

All pictures are of the actual item. If this is a railroad item, this material is obsolete and no longer in use by the railroad. Please email with questions. Publishers of Train Shed Cyclopedias and Stephans Railroad Directories. Large inventory of railroad books and magazines. Thank you for buying from us.

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