Original grate

I wonder if any of the original cast iron grates are still in use today from the first batch of agri's

While I'd hoped mine would limp through another season this was sadly not to be, I've had a mid season fail

Think I got my money out of it mind



While it hadnt totally died I felt it was very close to depositing the fire into the ash pan  



But 10mins later all was well again  



I'll be interested to see if this lasts as long although I'm part way through a rose bud grate build which I plan to swap it out with once I get all the eleventy billion holes drilled in the plate

So I wonder if that was the last original cast grate that was still in use up till last weekend, should I have some kind of wake for the last grate

Looks like your original grate has been cremated enough mate, I'd just bury it in the garden. Maybe a future Time Team can come along and dig it up and call it a "grate" find showing how inventive we all were in the "grate" age of steam!! and prove Coal did exist and was once a thing!

I also have an early Agri, class of 2006 I believe, although my grate closely resembles your last photo. I part built a 4 1/2" Burrell 12 years ago and made a Stainless Steel grate for it which just sat on the ashpan on four uprights, it wasn't fixed to the pan as ours is now, and it worked "grate". It was as good as new when I sold the engine (BIG regret there BTW). I think I will try making one for my current Burrell at some point.

Any chance of some pics of the rest of your engine? Would be nice to see it. I would post one of mine but don't have a bl***y clue how to do it!

The original grates were cast and all the engines of the early batch 1's I know of have long since departed this world and been replaced with either the owners own option or one of the newer ones you see in the last photo

Heres mine, nothing that special just a regular agri



While I say its nothing special, my engine is the original control model from the very 1st batch one MW engines and was factory built (being the control model), it then went on to be the demo/showroom engine I understand, which may explain why the grate survived as long as it has because it had such little use in its first 10yrs of its life.
So the engine is kind of a bit special well its special to me and I'm glad to be the custodian of what could be classified as No 1.

Thanks for the photo. It looks great, not often you see them in black.

bartman wrote:Thanks for the photo. It looks great, not often you see them in black.

It actually started its control model life as a bit of an odd green colour, this photo of it I believe was taken at the Guildford model show when MW were promoting the Agri's, it was taken by Julie Old when she was building her batch one



The odd green is creeping through in places today which I kind of like as it shows its history.

I'm not sure when it went from green to black but it use to feature on the old STW website in black  with the team standing around it with a Likamobile and 2" agri, and my boiler inspector remembers it being black in the showroom.