Prescot & District Model Engineering Society, Sunday June 2nd 2002 Members Running Day

Описание: Prescot & District Model Engineering Society Members Running Day Sunday June 2nd 2002.
Present on this day are: Norman Matthews’ “Baltic” Freelance design 4-6-4 tank loco (he bought this one in 1976. It was built in 1939 by Harrold? Dean, a fitter, and one of the founder members of the Wigan DMES Club. Wigan DMES has some film of this loco running in the 1950’s and 1960’s. As I write these additions, in 2004, this loco is now 65 years old! Norman has made some modifications to it since he bought it ;- someone had put one of the axle boxes back in incorrectly, and so one of the driving wheel axles was skewed with respect to the others and this meant that Norman had to correct this and also Norman had to correct the coupling rods because of this. Originally, the boiler was just bare copper and not lagged, so Norman lagged it properly. He presumably was the one who painted it black). Also present is Dave Houghton & Alan Creswell’s unpainted Hunslet loco (a Don Young design called "Hunslette"). These loco’s were all in steam. All are 3 1/2 inch gauge.
This is Prescot in North West England. There was a 330 feet oval of track there from 2001 until about 2008 when the BICC / Prismian / Pirelli Cables Social club and Leisure grounds at Scotch Barn Lane, Prescot that we were "leasing" part of (a long disused tennis court in our case) was sold to developers to build houses on, then we were told to vacate the grounds, and our track got put into a large Council container stored away and our club house was vandalised and burned down. A terrible shame and a major loss to modelers in the North West. You can still see a historical image of where the track was on Google Earth, using the time rewind facility, from 2005, on the corner of where Scotchbarn lane meets Sinclair Avenue.