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

Steve Goodbody

In the late spring of 1985, the c field club s ne rail ay at entley ildfo l ar and Motor Museum has officially opened for business ith his ob oy also finished, and the e el e aminations a fast receding memory, and ith the school summer holidays no in session, the si teen year old author had settled do n for t o months of late mornings and intensi e lethargy. his, ho e er, did not last long.

Summer holidays

am, it appears, utterly incapable of rela ing at least in the sense that most people interpret the ord o nothing can t it still fidget mpty my mind thousand thoughts run through it o reiterate, am not one of life s rela ers, at least not in the classical sense, and by the third day of my summer holidays ne this for a fact ertainly, there ere the usual ee ly acti ities –household chores, club meetings, and of course entley at ee ends – and se eral portable trac and traction engine e ents dotted through the summer to loo for ard to in addition, but, after cleaning the already spotless or shop for the third day in a ro , it suddenly hit me as, for the first time since embar ing on Bluebell seven years before, bored o this came as a bit of a shoc , for d been loo ing for ard to a period of doing ery little after the intensity of the e aminations, or at least so d thought, but no that d tried it, reali ed that didn t li e it at all o, hat li ed as building things a nd hat needed, beyond all doubt, as a ne pro ect ut hat to build ell, it had to be another locomoti e, for that as here my primary interest and enthusiasm lay nd, spoiled by the many intensi e but en oyable days spent dri ing fully loaded passenger trains at entley, and ha ing by then gained e perience ith a ide range of engines on our ground le el trac , ne that ideally anted a se en and a quarter inch gauge locomoti e the si e and po er of the larger engines being more suited to the tas urthermore, if as honest, preferred the indi idualistic charm of narro gauge prototypes to the more purposeful appearance of their standard gauge brethren nd, of course, it had to be capable of being built ith the tools already to hand, because as still a schoolboy on a ery meagre budget, and the finished product had to be capable of being manhandled out of the bac garden or shop and up our one in four dri e ay hen it as finished h yes, and it mustn t be too comple as anted to finish it ithin four years fi e at the most o ay, si at the outside if should end up doing le els and going to uni ersity o, in summary, as loo ing for a se en and a quarter inch narro gauge locomoti e, capable of being built on a small d ardian round bed lathe capacity not quite eight inches diameter and eighteen inches bet een centres , ithout a milling machine, and light enough to manhandle and t ransport around the house and aimed to finish it ithin si years at orst case n my youthful nai ety could see no potential conflicts ith any of these goals they all seemed perfectly reasonable to me and so, retrie ing a stack of recent Model Engineer maga ines from the shelf abo e my riting des , began to flic through the ad ertisement pages to see hat designs ere on offer

Introducing Elidir

o , the increasingly patient readers may recall that Bluebell, the gauge pot boiler based around a Mamod stationary engine and described in the first episode of this series, o ed her general appearance to the ale of heidol ail ay s engines depicted on a postcard purchased during a family holiday to ales during the mid s and sa ed for posterity in the author s boyhood scrapboo ell, during that same holiday, and then on a similar trip to no donia in the inter ening years, e had isited se eral more of the reat ittle rains of ales, as they ere then and still are collecti ely no n, and had been utterly smitten by one particular saddle tan locomoti e bearing the nameplate Holy War hich had gracefully trundled its ay up and do n the line beside the la e at ala hat, thought, as a ery pretty engine er the years, as my rail ay no ledge gre , learned that Holy War as but one of a ariety of similar engines manufactured by the unslet ngine ompany of eeds from the late s to the ery early s, many of hich had or ed humdrum li es ferrying materials around the slate mines of orth ales, and than fully se eral had either been restored or ere preser ed and a aiting restoration nd, to my eyes at least, hether ith cab or ithout, a more attracti ely proportioned locomoti e ould be hard to find nd by no m sure that you, prescient eader, ha e an in ling as to here this is heading, don t you or, placing the most recent stac of Model Engineers upon my des , opened the ery first page of the une issue and there, under the large font heading Elidir, as a line dra ing of an engine hich loo ed ery much li e Holy War urriedly, re ie ed the summari ed specifications in the ad ertisement and, although impossible to confirm ithout the dra ings, it appeared that Elidir, in addition to being a design based upon my ideal locomoti e, might actually meet my other goals in addition ith boredom replaced by e citement, it seemed the search for a ne pro ect might be o er before it had really begun photo 89 nd so, after a brief consultation ith mum and dad to confirm their illingness to host yet another locomoti e pro ect, dashed off a letter to Messrs ee es o ham td, enclosed a cheque for the princely sum of t enty one pounds and fifty pence plus postage and , and began to count the days until a set of Elidir dra ings arri ed by return post nd, in eager anticipation of my ne t pro ect, probably ga e the or shop yet another clean in the meantime

An ounce of planning n my opinion, there are ery fe things as satisfying as poring o er a good set of dra ings hen draughted ell, the depicted ob ects leap from the t o dimensional page into a fully formed three dimensional mage in my mind the designer s aims and intentions being ob ious suspect that most model engineers are li e that. nd, in the ideal case, the designer, in addition to presenting their intentions clearly and unambiguously on the page, ill also ha e thought carefully about each part s manufacture and assembly, and this attention to detail ill ma e all the difference to the builder o , ith Rob Roy, hile the dra ings and the design ere ery good o erall, recalled se eral errors hich had caused a great deal of head scratching once the parts ere made, and some asted effort hen those parts had to be re made into something that ould fit and or n short, Rob Roy had taught me to isuali e, chec , re chec , and sometimes e en s etch, each part along ith its neighbours before cutting any metal nd so, as opened the ele en ne ly arri ed Elidir dra ings for the first time, as unsure hat to e pect My first impression as that the dra ings ere clear and uncluttered, a good sign because any errors or omissions ould hopefully be more ob ious in re ie also noticed that the parts had the ump off the page into three dimensions quality, something surprisingly difficult to achie e but highly desirable and encouraging to the builder ut ere they accurate i e a ill oy, began searching for missed dimensions, inconsistent dimensions, impossible assemblies, and anything else hich might present a problem ith the design or its construction. nd, after a day of this, had found e actly none reathing a sigh of relief, mo ed on to the crucial question – could I actually build it ith dra ings in hand, retired to the or shop to consider ho ould machine each of the larger parts, starting ith the biggest lumps of al l, the cylinders o , at t o and a quarter inches bore and ith a t o and a half inch stro e, reali ed that the si e and eight of each cylinder casting ould be roughly one third of a completed Rob Roy – not something to be ta en lightly, if you ll pardon another pun preading the appropriate dra ing across dad s ood or ing bench, began to plan each machining step, measuring the lathe carefully to ensure the cylinder castings ould fit in each of the necessary configurations and, after a full day of head scratching and pondering, concluded that, hile it ould be a tight fit and d need some creati e setups and ha e to ma e an ad ustable fly cutter to do the ob, should be able to accurately machine the cylinders on my little lathe ith the tools at hand y the end of the follo ing day, d re ie ed each of the dra ings in a similar fashion and concluded that there as only one part on the entire engine hich simply could not machine ith the tools at hand the large diameter ring hich connected the boiler to the smo ebo his, reasoned, as a relati ely minor problem and one needn t orry about for three or four years and, as it turned out, as e actly fifty percent correct ith this conclusion but that ill e entually become clear nd so, ha ing con inced myself that Elidir s design as sound, and that could probably build it ith the limited tools in my or shop, and feeling that the result ould be orth the effort, ordered the chassis steel and prepared to embar on my ne t pro ect. nd, ith fe distractions or obstacles to get in the ay, by the end of the holidays the basic chassis as, to all intents and purposes, complete photo 90 t this point too the opportunity to line up all three engines for a photograph, one of only t o occasions hen that has happened, and it as only then, ith the three of them sitting side by side on the grass outside the or shop, that truly began to reali e the scale of the tas upon hich d embar ed photo 91 .

Slippery slopes

o , as is so often the case hen doing a long and tedious ob hac sa ing and filing the frames to shape being that summer s prime e ample my mind occasionally anders into a dangerous ‘What if?’ onderland, a quagmire filled region here pro ects tend to become stuc , or unstuc , depending upon your interpretation of the phrase ou no the sort of thing one minute you re happily building an Elidir to the published design, the ne t you e decided to relocate the handbra e column to the other side of the cab, and to add holes for an e tra bra e shaft, and to dra up plans to incorporate a steam cylinder and a acuum cylinder and a acuum reser oir in the space behind the boiler, and all because you thought to yourself in a ea moment during your fourth consecuti e day of frame filing hat if added steam bra es to the engine li e ill s Dart, and acuum bra es li e eoff s Lorna ouldn t that be fun nd, ust li e that, and not for the last time, the What if? Wonderland, to gi e it a catchy moni er, turned the scope of an already large pro ect into something e en larger. ut that as a problem for the future, for ith the e el results published and deemed satisfactory, and ith the alarm cloc blaring at ten to fi e each morning so that could al the t o miles to catch the bus to righton for le el studies, and ith the return ourney getting me home after se en o cloc each e ening, and ith home or piled on top of it all, the summer holidays e entually ended and a ne school term began. nd, after ust one ee of this performance, and no ing that there ere t o full years of it to come, and ha ing neither the time nor energy to thin about Elidir bet een the endless cycle of college, home or and sleep, began to suspect that my si year orst case timeline might ha e been a little optimistic h ell, thought, it s not the end of the orld if it ta es an e tra couple of years to complete

Postscript to Par t 15 or those unfamiliar ith the ritish state education system of the time, and begging forgi eness to our cottish readers because belie e that their system as not quite the same, let me briefly and some hat o er simplistically e plain ho things or ed, for it is ery different to the system employed in other countries, most notably the irstly, after finishing primary school at age ele en, students entered a secondary school here, o er the course of the ne t fi e years, their focus steadily narro ed to perhaps eight or ten sub ects until, at the end of their fifth year, they sat their Ordinary-level (hence, O-level e aminations hich ere graded accordingly. rior to ta ing those le el e aminations, students ould choose a reduced number of sub ects, typically no more than three or four, hich they ished to study for an additional t o years to Advanced-level (hence, A-level , and ould apply to a school or college hich taught those le el courses for study n turn, the selected establishments offered places on the desired courses contingent upon students achie ing certain le el grades in the ey preparatory sub ects entually, and to complete the picture, at the end of their le el studies students under ent a similar process should they ish to study for a uni ersity degree n this case, uni ersity places ere offered to students based upon their le el e amination results ne consequence of this system, and one hich my merican colleagues find hard to belie e, is that students typically began focusing on a particular discipline from the age of thirteen or fourteen and, by age se enteen, their long term career specialisation as largely set he second consequence as that, ith college and uni ersity places being based e clusi ely upon those one time e amination results, a great deal hinged upon the results of those le el and le el e ams n short, le el and le el studies ere considered enormously important, and that is hy they generally too precedence o er the author s model engineering acti ities along the ay nnoying, isn t it