2K is unlikely to cover the cost of a boiler if made for you and not leave much change if you make it yourself.

Not looked at prices lately but £5K for castings, materials etc would not be far off the mark.

For a builders engine then the greater detal of the Fowler A7 will keep you happy in the workshop for a good while as everything is scaled down from full size where as like most of Hainings designs some parts are more for function than form.

A warning about Graham Howard and Brunell, I bought a compleete set of parts less finished gears 10 or so years ago, only a few ever arrived. He is a crook, and if he wants to complain I am only too happy to meet him in court.

A set of castings for the 2" Burrell is near £5k.But this is a very detailed engine, rather like the Allchin, a more simple one must be much quicker!

Boiler kit for 2" ploughinng engine was about £800, my made 2" boiler was £2.5k.

I'm building an MJ Engineering Burrell gold medal at the moment and the castings/drawings are really first class. The build book is excellent too. I think MJ Engineering will be at the open day at Fareham MES on the 30th, so I hope to get down there to see some completed ones. Would be worth seeing for yourself.

I went for 2" as I'm an amputee and can't heft big items about. A 2" engine should be just about manageable, especially a Burrell which was a relatively small engine anyway.

Exciting – I'm also going through a similar thought process – although I need to finish my Minnie first – so realistically a year or two away.. Would be interested to know which path you choose after your trip to MJ…

Jason – do you have an updated photo album for your A7 build? I have read an number of your (as always excellent) threads on this and other forums to get a feel for the MJ model and whether it would be within my capabilities – but the earlier posts have a broken link to a photobucket album….

Regards

Dom

2" is 2" to the foot or 1/6th scale, 3" engine would be 3" to the foot or 1/4 scale

These are all true scales and the size of the engine will vary depending on the size of teh prorotype for example a 2" gold medal tractor was a small engine and may come up about 18" long in this scale yet a large prototype such as a ploughing engine will be in the region of 48" long for the same given 2" scale.

On the continent more common metric scales may bit a bit more common such as 1;2, 1:2.5, 1:5 and 1:10. The US tend to use fractional scales both for traction engines and locos

The two newcomers in this thread seem to know what sort of size engine they want to make and probably less confusing than a narrow gauge loco built to for one of the common gauges of track which could lead to several scales on engine on the same gauge.

Edited By JasonB on 20/07/2022 18:13:21

As I have no interest in rallying the engine and just like the building then 2" would do me. I've the castings for a 2" superba under the bench but doubt I'll get round to making it as my interests have moved away from traction engine models.

Have you had a look at Traction talk forum? There's several detailed build threads on ther to give a good idea of challenges and solutions.

Martin

Including my 4" build, complete with fumbles and how not to do it.

Andrew