Is it close?

Pausing at Lakeside on its home railway 
[image courtesy of Furness Railway Trust]

Starting with the basic Y9 saddle tanker, the first step was to see how much of the original model I could keep. Comparing the wheelbase, FR20 is 7ft 9ins or 31mm at 4mm to the foot compared to the Y9’s 33mm or 8ft 3ins. That’s 2mm difference but, for the purpose of this exercise, good enough. I could relocate one axle to get it spot on but I would have to tweak so much else it would make the job much bigger and may never get finished.

Next, there are the wheels. The Y9’s are 16.5mm, equivalent to 4ft 1.5ins while FR20’s are bigger at 4ft 9ins equating to 19mm. Fortunately I already had some the right size on a Hornby 0-6-0 tank loco. The question is, can they be made to fit the Y9? The only way to find out is to strip them both and try and mix and match the parts.

Choosing a donor

Shopping around, Hornby seems to have done two 0-4-0 locos over the years, a saddle tanker and a side tanker. Because of FR20’s history I opted for the saddle tanker and started watching a few on Ebay. I couldn’t be sure that one would be a good basis for FR 20 but they were not too dear and I decided to take a chance. Eventually I bought one in Caledonian Railways livery that was in good condition for not a lot of money.

 The model is actually a reasonable representation of the Drummond Y9 shunters introduced in 1882, so I had, in fact, already bought a Victorian loco. They enjoyed very long working lives and even did some main line work with a coal truck to extend their range. However, that was not why I bought one and I had bigger plans for the little engine.

Finding my way

Eventually I decided I wanted to indulge my new-found enthusiasm by creating my own mid-Victorian train to run on 00 layouts. I didn’t want to attempt anything too ambitious or spend a fortune. I just wanted to put together rolling stock of a Hornby-level of detail that evokes this lost era. A modest enough ambition I thought; apparently not. There is virtually nothing available in 00 from any major manufacturer that represents this period.

Some models have touched on very late Victorian examples like Triang and then Hornby’s Lord of the Isles. With its big single driving wheels it looks a lot older than it is. In reality these Achillies class locos date from the 1890s.

I then started considering the possibility of modifying something to give a look of the era of locos I was trying to capture. Perhaps I could modify the Lord of the Isles to recreate a LNWR Problem class, the distant ancestor of the Dean Single and possibly the cause of my wife’s ancestor’s demise.

I could remove the cab and do other bits of detailing. Closer inspection showed it would be tricky, particularly as the Problems had outside cylinders with all the linkage that the Lord of the Isle model lacks. Also, the Isles model is not so cheap these days and I didn’t have the confidence to attack one with a hacksaw.

Then I thought of Furness railway’s FR 20. It made sense on a number of fronts. I was brought up in Furness and even remember seeing FR 20s sister loco at Stone Cross school in the 1970s. So there was an emotional attachment. Also, it occurred to me that as it spent much of its life as an 0-4-0 saddle tanker, could I turn a mass produced model of one into a reasonable FR 20. Chances are they would be cheap to buy so I worried less about putting one under the blade.

The clincher was the Furness Railway produces an excellent publication by Tim Owen called The Great Survivor. Not only does it have a history of FR 20 from construction to restoration, it also includes a good set of plans in 7mm scale. That decided it. Furness Railway’s FR 20 was my best chance of creating a loco for my Victorian train.

How it all started

Furness Railway's FR 20 during a filming assignment
[image courtesy of the Furness Railway Trust]

So why try and model the Furness Railway’s FR20? Well, it was all sparked off by family history research. Looking into my wife’s genealogy, I discovered her great, great grandfather met a grisly death under the wheels of a steam locomotive at Preston station in 1868. Strangely, this got me interested in mid-Victorian railways and rolling stock.

I had always had a passing interest in trains but always found them out-innovated and out-performed by other forms of transport. Looking back, I realize that almost the entire body of enthusiasm for steam engines seems to focus on 20^th century examples. However, by then, they were yesterday’s technology and yes, they were being outperformed by cars, planes and, before the end of their life, even rockets.

However, go back to the 19^th century, specifically 1830 to 1870 and they were the fastest things on the planet. Let me make that point clearer, they were not the fastest steam engines, fastest trains or fastest land speed. They were the fastest man made transport on the planet bar none.

Back in 1851 the outright speed record was 81mph and held by a steam locomotive and this was at a time when the only competition was a horse; maximum speed 38mph. Just imagine the impact on the average Victorian from any walk of life. This was an unbelievable technical revolution. Steam locomotives were the equivalent of racing cars in the Edwardian period, aeroplanes in the ’30s, jet aircraft in the ’50s or space rockets in ’60s.

Not only that, but nobody knew for sure how to build them. Stephenson’s rocket had pooled a number of useful ideas to create a reasonable pattern for the future but nobody really knew if that was right or wrong. Consequently designs went off in all sorts of different directions. Many turned out to be blind alleys while some were not adopted for all the wrong reasons like broadgauge. It was a fascinating time when most of our national rail network was built and all the real advances were made.

By comparison the 20^th century witnessed a rail network in decline and the locomotive were mostly iterative refinements of established practice. Even the A1 class Pacifics of 57 years later could only manage 27mph more than that 1851 record.

However, with my enthusiasm fired, I struggled to find any worthwhile information on that exciting era of development. Most histories of railways pay lip service to the Rocket then skip to the end of the century. The preservation movement focuses mainly on locomotives that are still operating and they are mostly date from the 1920s to 1950s. There are seriously few Victorian locos at all still steaming and virtually none prior to 1871.

It soon became something of a quest as I searched for information. One exciting glimpse came via the late W M Whitcombe’s superb book of his paintings recreating many of those lost engines. Called After Rocket: the Forgotton Years 1830-1870, it gives a tantalizing glimpse into the fantastic diversity at the time.