Another RL is born "Lord Darby"

Hi all

After a second visit to the very impressive STW, and a chat with Dean, another RL is born.

The name “Lord Darby” is deliberately spelt with an A instead of an E, in tribute to my father who was in the Royal Navy in the late 40’s until the 50’s based in Hong Kong during the Korean War. Our surname is Allen, and Allen’s are nick named Darby in the RN for reasons that have yet to be fully explained. He was also very impressed with the team at planet STW and forked out a rather impressive amount of funds to kick start this project. So all my thanks to dad and the team at STW.

Living down under in NZ might seem a long way away, and believe me it is after sitting in one position for 24 plus hours, but the wonders of modern travel and communications it feels as though the team spirit created by STW and it disciple’s flows very easily south of the equator.

“Lord Darby” is the second STW engine to be imported into our club, Tauranga Model and Marine Engineering Club, www.taurangaminiaturerailway.org.nz/, the first being a showmans. I will try and encourage our fellow enthusiast to join the forum and share our build progress with you all, as no doubt we will be in fairly stiff competition with each other to complete our projects.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all at STW, and of course the STW extended family around the world.

Phil Allen (Darby junior).

Welcome to the growing Steam Traction World family. Nice to see engines being built way down under. I guess you will not be bringing your engines to the proposed Steam Traction World gathering in 2013.

Yes please pictures!

Hello Phil,
A very warm welcome to the forum & the growing "exclusive world" that is Steam Traction
Great to know that more of these wonderful large scale engines are going to the other side of the planet
So glad to hear that there is a Showmans on the go over there too, as you may realise I'm in the "showmans camp" & enjoy the friendly rivalry that occasionally goes on, on this forum
Sounds like you have a very interesting family history & I love the way you have arrived at a name for your engine.
Congratulations on deciding to commit to the build, I garantee you will not regret it & you will have something that will impress almost everyone that see's it, as well as an heir loom/investment, plus all the fun of building it & steaming it.
You'll find lots of help on the forum if you need it, also there are some very knowledgable "full size steam people" as well as model engineers, who, I think it is safe to say, will be able to answer / give advice on practically anything Steam"!!
Don't forget to put pictures of you progress up here too, can never get too many!
Wishing you a Happy Christmas & a great start to your build.
Regards,
Tony
(In "bloody freezing" Scotland)

Welcome to this strange online club Phil, as one road Loco is almost finished ( ) another one is born. The support and banter (does that translate into NZ speak?) on here is great and I have been lucky enough to meet some of the other builders and share a beer too.

Please encourage your showmans engine builder to put some photos on, we wont take the p#% because he chose to build one Also, please put some up of your progress too, it will be a truly international forum then as there are some Europeans on here already and at least one American.

Regards and a Merry Christmas to you all down under.

Brian

PS: Has the world ended yet, todays the day and after all it will end for you first

Hi Phil,

Welcome to the forum and it’s nice to see the tradition of Burrell Traction Engines being exported to New Zealand - well done STW!

Thanks for the link to your local ME Club, the first photo which greeted me was a lovely 7¼” Darjeeling Loco which is one of my favourite engines. Interestingly this loco has a ‘Corrosive Resistant’ Boiler, the following web page on its construction may be of interest to fellow builders:

http://sonadaworks.com/duplex_stainless_boilers/

I would love to have one of these on a trailer behind my Road Loco as a load to pull.

In the meantime I hope you will keep us updated on your Antipodean Build and all the best for the Festive Season.

Tim