That said I enjoy driving larger scale locos and I have a friend in Western Australia who has a 12 inch gauge, 2/7 scale railway with a pair of Western Australian Government Railway W class 4-8-2s and a pair of South Australian Railways 400 Class 4-8-2+2-8-4 Garratt locomotives. I chose 3½ inch gauge for several reasons, the principal ones being that SWMBO allowed them to be displayed in the house, and I could lift the locos by myself in and out of the car.ĥ and 7¼ inch gauges just seemed unmanageable when dealing with Pacifics. When travelling to the UK working for Farley, I became exposed to the scale live steam scene, and decided that I would try to collect a set of the British Pacifics in 3½ inch gauge. See the photo of Dorothy Mather, widow of Arthur Peppercorn, initiating the profile cutting of the frames for the locomotive Tornado at British Steel in Leeds on 13th July 1994. This machine allowed very large and thick plates to be drilled and profile-cut in one pass, and our first customer was British Steel.Īnother Farley CNC profile cutting machine, a Trident, was used to cut the frame plates of A1 class 'Tornado' in 1994. The most innovative machine we designed at the time (mid 1980's) was the 'Fabricator' which combined a high-power plasma with a high-power drill and automatic tool changer.

Most relevantly I worked with Peter Farley on the formation of Farley Manufacturing, which designed and built state of the art CNC controlled profile cutting machines using primarily electric arc plasma but also oxy-acetylene, water jet and lasers. My working career in engineering was primarily focused on small hi-tech export orientated design and manufacturing companies, where I held a range of sales and marketing and product development roles. This love of things mechanical led onto a lifelong passion for building things whether it was motorcycles, houses, machines, businesses or ideas and at university it led to bachelors and masters degrees in mechanical engineering.

Ironcad locomotive driver