History : Joseph Beattie was one of the old school locomotive designers who believed in a low centre of gravity for his locos. Boiler centre line was kept naturally low, while well tanks between the frames were employed rather than the higher side or saddle tanks. An whole series of boilers and smokebox's were designed for burning coal instead of coke. The last six and the Nine Elms locomotives had square splashers reminicent of short side tanks and the safety valve mounted on the middle ring of the boiler, instead of the first. The last six locomotives built by Beyer Peacock also had larger bunkers.
Drawing Information.
The Beattie Well Tank is a very interesting loco to model with many physical variations made over its 120 year life span. Drawing details for the model were taken from an article by D Hughes, entitled ' Build a Beattie Well Tank ' in Model Railways - May 1982. This article is mainly about the construction of a Jidenco kit, but includes drawings for three variants of the Beattie and a few photographs. Second source of information came from an article by C.J. Binnie in Model Railway Constructor - February 1970 which also includes a 7mm scale drawing and a few photographs.
Project History.
The Beattie Well Tank is yet another one of those incomplete projects from many many moons ago, it is hoped that when complete, this little loco will become part of the 'Snitzl Town' stud and will be privately own by Charles Rhodes Textiles. I usually model locos on a single prototype, but in this case, a large portion of the model is based on No 33, the ' Phoenix ' , with the crossheads and crosshead guides taken from No 247.
Modelling starts with the coupling rods, connecting rods and crosshead guides, all of which along with gardening breaks and decorating, took what seemed like an eternity. Front wheels were destroyed when the chassis was partially stripped down so that additional details such as ashpan, well tanks and wheel guards could be added.
<< Back to Main Blog.