Drawings

To build and operate a Peppercorn class A1 Pacific steam locomotive

Drawings

David Elliott operating the drawing scanner at NRM, York, 1993 On 13 April 1993 the painstaking job of cataloguing, scanning, cleaning up and re-drawing began. The engineering team, led by David Elliott and including Gerard Hill, Bob Alderman and many others, spent several weeks at the National Railway Museum at York and in the end around 95% of the original drawings were discovered.

These were mostly Indian ink tracings on linen and about 1,100 drawings were scanned in 1993 and a further 140 in 2001. These were then electronically de-skewed and cleaned with a few being completely redrawn due to poor quality originals.

The scans of the drawings captured in electronic form, NRM York, 1993

Many have been subsequently modified or redrawn to add material specifications and tolerances. The Trust had also to make sense of such gems on the original drawings as “this bolt to be a good fit” and “this item to be made with special care” and ascertain exactly what “best Yorkshire iron” actually is. Well, we know that Best Yorkshire Iron was described in London & North Eastern Railway Specification No. 41 of August 1939, but no copy of such a specification has been found. It is a sure bet that such a material is no longer available, and the Trust would probably not want to use it if it was!