… as we know it. Or more accurately, can identify it.

I will try to add a photo in the usual way of chat-sites (simple file transfers) but ever since the site owners destroyed our own albums, doing so seems a black art. The “Galley” appears no more than a totally random mixture of users’ engineering photos and odd ones the server adds for the hell of it.

So I’ll type the Words and hope the Pictures will appear too. Otherwise we won’t get far.

The machine is a very small, very neat twin-cylinder pump, opposed horizontal pattern, with a flat-belt pulley c. 4″ diameter. The pulley is accompanied by a sprung-arm tensioner / clutch.

This assembly is screwed to a small cast-iron box, about 4″ square X 3″ deep, with a large screwed-in “inspection hatch” shown open below, and four threaded outlets, apparently for flexibility in application. Two are plugged; one holds a simple, user-adjustable safety-valve; the other carries a 1/4″ hose spout which could be a previous owner’s custom fitting.

The box has two curved “feet” suggesting tank mounting, but with just two 3/16″ dia screw-holes.

The cylindrical fittings on the compressor itself, which is also of cast-iron, are a large Stauffer-type grease-pot and a neat inlet air-filter.

I have now wondered if it could also function as a vacuum-pump for testing miniature-railway brakes without having to steam a loco.

Does anyone recognise this and know its origin (make, etc.)? I can’t recall when and where I obtained my specimen, possibly a workshop clearance within the club. I may have thought it could feed a basic air-brush I bought years ago and have never used.

There are no makers’ name, trade-mark (not even “Broad Arrow”!), model name / number, component-numbers, specification label, NATO item-number, …, of any sort anywhere on the machine. Nor did it come to me with reservoir and motor which may have carried labels.

So does anyone recognise the make, type and intended purpose, etc,.?

Now to see if it will accept piccies…… Last time I tried, it failed.