Gauge 3 model at the Brighton Toy Museum

[MikeWilliams]

I stumbled across this web page:

http://www.brightontoymuseum.co.uk/index/Hardwicke,_LNWR_Locomotive_790_(2.5_inch_gauge)

The caption says built c1955, but nothing else.  Does anyone know more please?  Like who built it?

Mike

[IanT]

Not too much to go on Mike - and I cannot add too much either I'm afraid... but it did ring another bell with me...

I was very fortunate last year to be given custodianship of a complete bound set of Model Engineers (dating back to 1898) by the family of someone who had been closely connected to the Brighton Toy Museum. I brought the collection home after some careful estimates of it's weight - which was a bit borderline for my car. We drove back very gingerly and without incident - but moving the collection down from its third floor storage, involved some thirty round trips up and down the stairs and took me several hours. I was pretty sore the next day, so took several days to actually unload the books once back home...

The person concerned built and owned several 5" locos (but no 2.5" ones that I am aware of) and was a very active supporter and contributor to TBTM. I intend to take very good care of his ME 'Library' and hopefully one day, someone else will continue to do so...

Good luck with your quest Mike...

Regards,

IanT   

[MikeWilliams]

Thank you Ian.

You are a lucky man.  I have about 20 old volumes, but a complete set would be great.  You could go through and compile a list of Gauge 3 interests in them ... if you have a few weeks with nothing else to do.

Seriously, it would be great to gradually create a list of all published G3 and 2.5in published material, but alas life is too short.

Mike

[IanT]

Well, I had a fairly complete set of 'loose' ME magazines (mostly stored in box-cases) before that Mike, dating from the early 40's onwards - and a few much earlier ones too.

As I don't really need them now, I would like them to go to a good home (or homes) if possible, so if any G3S member would like some ME back-volumes then I may be able to help them. All being well, I will be at the Winter GTG - so they could be collected there. Magazines get a bit expensive to post in quantity (and I don't really want to dig out individual issues and break up sets to be honest) - so arranging collection makes more sense.

If anyone is interested - please PM me.

Regards,

IanT

PS I have been 'informally' right back through my MEs - and there are many interesting 2.5" articles (quite apart from all the LBSC stuff). There were other people who were very influential back in the day. One who comes to mind was C M Keiller, who was not only an excellent model engineer (and experimenter) but also really pushed the boundaries of 'scale' modelling back then - building all his engines very close to actual prototype - albeit in 1/2" scale.  It would be good to be able to make this material more available to people today but we'd probably be hitting copyright issues...

But some kind of G3/2.5" reference/guide to what has been published in ME should be possible...just needs someone to do it....