A Dorset Cracker.

[Annie]

Just to show that there really was a prototype for everything I thought you'd be interested in this picture of a geared loco that was built for a New Zealand timber tramway, the Auckland Timber Co, in 1881 by the Dorset Iron Foundry. A second loco was built for the same tramway in 1882. Both locos worked for the Auckland Timber Co until 1888 and after that the trail goes cold.
This is the only known photo of this loco and from my research not a great deal more is known about it.

[90733]

I do like that, great find, thanks for sharing.

[spooner]

I think the late Peter Jones made a model.There's a write up in his book Building Small Steam Locomotives.

[Tony Bird]

Hi Annie,

Very interesting with plain wheels running on a flanged track cannot be many of them about!

Thanks for sharing.

Regards Tony.

[Annie]

Hi Annie,

Very interesting with plain wheels running on a flanged track  cannot be many of them about!

Thanks for sharing.

Regards Tony.

Yes I hadn't noticed that at first. None of the books on timber tramways published here in NZ mention a line with flanged or plateway type track either. Very mysterious

[SapperAnt]

On closer inspection that track looks like baulks of timber with a flanges piece of iron nailed to it. very crude. very light weight. very easy to construct.

Essentially a variation on the traditional Outram plate which was an L shaped piece of iron used as rails, usually cast in yard lengths, with a strengthening rib cast integrally under the horizontal section.

The Outram plate was designed by an engineer called Benjamin OUtram and it is from where we get the expression Tramway/ tramplate as it is an abbreviation of Outram.

[MikeDoc]

Very interesting with plain wheels running on a flanged track  cannot be many of them about!
Thanks for sharing.
Regards Tony.

Although it certainly looks like a plateway locomotive there are a couple of diifculties in making that assumption. Firstly the undoubted world authority on steam plateway locos (M J T Lewis) ignores it when identifying the last ones produced. Secondly I can find no reference to any form of plateway 'down under'. Some possibilites do, however, exist to explain the photo, as:

* It could be intended to run on a guide wheel line (see LADY BARKLY) and the guide wheels are not yet in place in order to make it easier to move during shipping.

* We could be looking at a loco with outside flanges (see the Swanscombe line in Kent which also had a saddle tank Lewin loco ~ Dorset Iron Foundry was the successor to Lewin).

In any case a fascinating photo that has had me scratching my head since I first saw it in the Lewin book.

Mike Dockery.[/img]

[Tony Bird]

Hi,


The Outram plate was designed by an engineer called Benjamin OUtram and it is from where we get the expression Tramway/ tramplate as it is an abbreviation of Outram.


From a Outram biography.

A common misconception is that the word "tramway" comes from Outram's surname but the word actually derives from the Low German word "traam" meaning "a beam" (of a wheelbarrow). Outram always referred to tramways as railways.

Regards Tony.