T h e E a t i n g o f E l e p h a n t s

By the end of 1984, the ckfield club’s expanded engineering team, doggedly assembling panelafter-panel of triple-gauge track and blissfully unaware of the consequences, had inadver tently disrupted the global screwdriver market and caused unforeseen hardship to speculative tool sellers and Algarvian proper ty developers alike.

However, and just when you think you’ve got the hang of things, that is not where we’re starting this episode So, follow me, patient Reader, as we backpedal the story by a few months to May of 1984 and enter a cloche-windowed workshop in an outlying suburb of Crowborough

Footwear to the rescue

With the earthworks at Bentley nearing completion, and the first load of washings soon to be delivered in the wrong place, there was plenty to keep me busy beyond the hours of school and its attendant homework However, while the time which I could devote to Rob Roy had certainly reduced, it had not been eliminated completely and, as a result, by

May of 1984 my little engine was ready for its first steam test However, like all who reach this happy stage, I would first need a device to draw air through the fire to keep it burning until the engine could do so by itself

Rummaging through the ‘things that might be useful one day’ box, and with necessity being the mother of invention, I retrieved an old and battered centrifugal water pump of provenance unknown and, hunting still further, a little 12 volt electric motor hiding in the bottom corner of the self-same container Together, they seemed to form an ideal starting point for a Rob Roy si ed electric steam-raising blower and, before long, the pump was dismantled, the motor mounted concentrically atop, and a suitably sized spigot turned to match the inside of the engine’s chimney So far, so good, I thought

Having discarded the pump’s rotor - it was simply too heavy for the little motor to turn - thoughts turned to an appropriate impeller for the job It would have to be thin, light, and just the right diameter to fit the internal bore of the pump housing Drawing a blank, and with the day nearing its end, I locked the workshop and retired to the house to get ready for school the following morning

Now it must have been a Sunday evening for, on Sunday evenings, one of my chores was to polish the family’s shoes in readiness for the week to come And so, with newspaper spread on the kitchen floor and shoes at the ready, I fetched the box of polishing paraphernalia and opened the brown polish tin using the handy catch on its side Seeing that it was nearly empty, I flipped opened the black one and was presented with the same situation No matter, I thought, beginning to scrub, there’s just enough left to get the job done

With the shoes gleaming and everything returned to its rightful place, I gathered the two empty tins for disposal and, trying unsuccessfully to crush them in my hands, was impressed by the strength and rigidity of something that weighed so little Suddenly a thought crossed my mind and, returning to the workshop, I placed the tins next to the incomplete blower ready for further consideration at a later time

The following weekend, with the aid of a pair of cheap tinsnips, a soldering iron and a few strategically placed copper rivets to hold everything together, the empty shoe polish tins were transformed into something closely resembling a centrifugal fan Putting everything together and connecting a car battery, the motor turned, the fan spun and, what is more, a decent draught blew from the two exit holes on the periphery of the salvaged pump casting Even better, holding a piece of paper beneath the chimney spigot, it appeared the air was being drawn from the right place Success, it would seem!

And so, later that month, with two lengths of softwood providing an improvised track, with boiler and tanks filled with water, and with a handful of paraffin-soaked wood poked liberally into the firebox, I lit a match, dropped it through the fire-hole, and connected the shoe-polish blower to the battery

And at that moment, threeand-a-bit years after buying a certain book at a certain exhibition in storm-battered Brighton, and with a faint ‘whump’ as the wood ignited behind the fire-hole door, I