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Glover - Cook Jellico Coal Co No 1
The PrototypeI love this little Glover. It was built specifically for use inside a coal mine. This is a small engine. At the cab, tank, and stack it is no more than five feet off the rails. Overall length is thirteen feet. What I love is its sinister look. It's mission in life is to crawl on its belly backwards out of a coal mine hauling a load of coal that was wrestled by the miners from the inside of the mine. My vision of this engine in operation is an English Bulldog with its teeth firmly imbedded in a stick he is trying to wrest from your hand. Why backwards? The cab is so low it would be nearly impossible to mount a coupler on the rear. Note the crude 'coupler' in the above photo. I assume the blocks protruding from the front bumper were used to fend off coal cars moving faster than No 1. You might ask, "Why no tender or coal bunker?" From the builders photo that follows, it appears as though there are two small coal bunkers under the windows on each side of the cab. And No 1 was never very far from additional fuel. Coming up with dimensions for this engine was a bit of a challenge as Richard Hillman's "Glover Steam Locomotives", gives only two dimensions, piston diameter (8") and piston stroke (14"). Of course, these are inside dimensions. Glover had an interesting method for designating builder numbers. The first three or four digits were made up of piston diameter and stroke. The last one or two digits was the engine's sequence at that diameter/stroke combination. So this engine's builder number was 81418. That means it was the 18th engine built with an 8 inch diameter and 14 inch stroke. We were fortunate in that we had a complete specification sheet for 81421, one of the surviving Glovers. I compared the ratio of piston height to driver diameter on both engines. They were the same indicating the driver diameters for 81418 and 81421 were both 24 inches. Fortunately we had a builders photo of CJCCo No 1.
Once the driver diameter was determined, perspective takeoff techniques were used to come up with the rest of the dimensions.
Drive Train SelectionWith dimensions, the search was on for a suitable drive train. A real challenge was the 1.2 inch drivers, unusually small for G scale engines. Fortunately, the search ended early in my basement. A Lehmann Porter's drivers are 1.23 inches in diameter. The wheelbase is 3 inches. While the wheelbase is about 10% too long, the difference shouldn't be all that noticible.
Cylinder diameter is 0.67 inches. Cylinder length is 1.21 inches. Valve chamber width is 0.77 inches. All three measurements are nearly identical to the prototype. The piston even slants upward to the front as does the prototype. The bottom line is that the drive train from the LGB Porter can be used with only very cosmetic modifications. The ProjectI hope to pick up a Lehmann Porter in the next week. No 1 will be a radio control battery powered engine. Individual pages for the different parts of this project are listed in the upper left corner of the page. |
(c) 2007 Iron Horse 1:29 |
