The great models that are around are usually the subject of a lot of research, occupying months or even years before swarf is made. The book Cherry’s Model Engines details just how much research Cherry Hill puts into her models and that is the secret of her success and the secret of other fine models. The great model engineers owe their success as much to what goes on outside the workshop as in it.
Most of us just want to get into the workshop, start cutting metal and get it finished. Published designs allow us to do just that. With some honourable exceptions published designs concentrate on making things easy for the builder than producing something truly exceptional.
If you do not have the capacity to do the research, you can be lucky and find that someone else has done it for you.
For example, Don Young’s Lucky 7 and Maxi Lucky 7 will provide all you need to build a good model of a 2ft gauge loco. A new book will give you the wherewithal to produce something special.
Peter Manning and Nicholas Burman have a new book: Anatomy of a Narrow Gauge Baldwin published by our friends at Camden Miniature Steam Services. Whether you want to build one, or just understand these wonderful little locomotives, this book provides all.
Plenty of history, good photos and full detail of these locos. For the model engineer there is a complete set of detail drawings, marked up in full size, that could be scaled to any model size - always allowing for things like boiler design which cannot be scaled direct and must conform to model design parameters.
These drawings are excellent. All done in Solid Works including super 3D colour assemblies. A couple of examples of drawings are shown above and below.
The book follows the history of Locomotive 17 and details its changes over time. It is beautifully printed on good quality card rather than thin paper and ring bound so that the reader can keep pages flat and not worry about damaging the binding. It is a great way to produce books of this type which are mainly valued for their drawings.
The Anatomy of a Narrow Gauge Baldwin
-its 100 Year History & its Three Lives
By Peter Manning, Nicholas Burman and paintings by Alex Leao
From Camden Miniature Steam Services £21.95
