The Greenly Gauge 2 0-6-0's.

The two Greenly designed Gauge 2 0-6-0’s meet for the first time. (There are four known: friend Adam Goodyear has another, while I stupidly missed a chassis on eBay a few years back). Although they share a common chassis, these two locos differ in detail. It’s the tender engine version that’s described in Greenly’s original 1907 drawing and this one has very nicely made reversing gear. Despite this, it was never fully assembled and came to me with the cylinders loose in the cast stretcher. It now has the exhaust taken from the top of the steam chests into a bifurcated blast pipe. It also now has a modern chicken feed fuel tank and hand pump in the tender.

The tank engine although superficially similar has the cylinders mounted as Greenly intended with an exhaust manifold (he shows a ‘T’ pipe) underneath the cylinders exhausting into a single blast pipe. It differs from the drawing in being made entirely from castings, even the frames being cast brass. This engine only has slip eccentric valve gear and came to me without bunker, fuel tank, burner etc. as is commonly the case with G2 survivors. It now has a replica cab back containing a modern chicken feed fuel tank. 
 

A significant difference between the two is that while the tank engine has 5 water tubes as Greenly intended, the tender engine has only 3, two of them inexplicably being cut out. Making these vestigial tubes steam tight (they had stubs of wood screws forced into them) was a significant challenge in reflowing the 110 year old silver solder, but successfully accomplished by son Paul. Its very difficult to detect any difference in performance between the two, but of course that may be masked by the modern burners.

The question now is “paint, or not to paint?” !!
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