Drummond's T14.

Drummond's T14 :  The LSWR Class T14 was a class of ten 4-6-0 locomotives designed by Dugald Drummond for express passenger service for London South Western Railway, built at Eastleigh between 1911 and 1912. The T14 was not one of Drummonds better loco designs, they suffered from heavy coal and water consumption and the axle boxes ran  extremely hot. Later modifications included removal of the paddlebox type splashers, raising the footplate and forced lubrication on the axle boxes. Maunsell modified the boiler and installed a superheater, however, the locomotive still used a lot of coal and water. In 1940, No 447's chimney required replacing due to wear and condensation and with no replacement available, a short stove-pipe chimney was substituted, there was a marked improvement in its steaming ability due to improved draughting and the same mod was carried out on the rest of the class. Livery under LSWR was sage green, with purple-brown edging and black and white lining. Under Southern Railway from grouping in 1923, the locomotives  were Maunsell's darker version of the LSWR Sage Green with yellow lettering on the tender and  black and white lining.

Project History.
The T14 was built to EM gauge and actually ran quite nice, but was missing its walschaerts valve gear. The problem with the walschaerts valve gear on the T14 model is that a pair of cylinders are located above the footplate and a pair of cylinders below the footplate, this means that when removing the chassis, the walschaerts valve gear has to be partially dismantled. Thirty years ago, this problem was given some thought and with a solution in mind the model was partly rebuilt, but now some 30 years later, I havn't a clue as to what those modifications were. Unless there's some hidden mechanism to remove the chassis, which is securely soldered to the body, I'm at a total loss as to what the next step was. After sleeping on it, a drastic dismantle with a large soldering iron produced three sub assemblies and work then turned to rebuilding the chassis with it's sharman type suspension system. On inspection of the incomplete mild steel valve gear, it was decided to start again in nickel silver, the grade of mild steel used on the original valve gear was very soft and the amount of time spent finishing the job may be wasted, therefore, a large section of this blog covers the making and assembly of the walschaerts valve gear.

Conclusion
It is not intended to run the T14 on Snitzl Town other than to test its running and valve gear mechanism, this loco is destined to sit on the shelf and wait for a more suitable layout to materialise, at which point the loco will be finished, painted and lined.

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