Henry Greenly blueprints

Henry Greenly's 1:1 diagrams for gauge 0 to 2-1/2" gauge, a page from the 1924 Bassett-Lowke "Catalogue B" [image info]

The importance of Henry Greenly to Bassett-Lowke Ltd. (and to the railway modelling community in general) can be seen from the sheer number of sets of model locomotive plans that he produced.

Design modifications

These blueprints weren't just literal copies of the original locomotive plans - as an engineer, Greenly would adapt, rescale and reproportion the designs to improve the stability and track-handling at whatever scale he was working to – while a full-size locomotive's weight makes it unlikely to fall over when taking a bend, the far more extreme track curves used in model railways and the different proportion of weight to track contact area meant that model loco wheels often needed to be out of scale before one even started to consider the rescaling of drive mechanisms and the need to be able to fit commercially-available mechanisms.

Greenly's philosophy was that it was more important for a model locomotive to work well while evoking the look of the original than to be a perfect scale copy that performed badly, so these blueprints and plans allowed modelmakers to build working models steam locos, trusting that Mr Greenly had already anticipated and dealt with most of the potential problems that might beset a model of a particular original loco.

For Bassett-Lowke, Greenly's prodigious output of plans meant that pretty much by default, any loco that was produced in-house by B-L (ie not imported or bought-in from another manufacturer) was likely to be based on a Greenly design.

Currently Incomplete - Work In Progress

Gauge 0 plans

LMS

• L15 LNWR Precursor 4-4-0
• L16 LNWR George V 4-4-0
• L20 LNWR Precursor Tank 4-4-2
• L107 LNWR Prince of Wales 4-6-2
• L229 LNWR En. Claughton 4-6-0
• L26 LNWR Webb's 5ft 6in Tank 2-4-2
• L129 LNWR Webb's “Jumbo” 2-4-0
• L126 LNWR “Lady of the Lake” 2-2-0

• L247 LMS Royal Scot 4-6-0
• L212 LMS (LYR) Baltic Tank 4-6-4
• L211 LMS (LYR) 4 cylinder 4-6-0

• L139 Caledonian Railway No.139 Dunalastair 4-4-0
• L48 Caledonian Railway Cardean 4-6-0
• L163 Caledonian Railway Race Single 123 4-2-2
• L138 Caledonian Railway Cathcart Tank 0-4-4

• L241 Midland Railway Rblt No.483 4-4-0
• L248 Midland Railway Passenger Tank 2000 0-6-4
• L166 Midland Railway Johnson's Single 4-2-2
• L117 Midland Railway Johnson's No. 2607 4-4-0

• L244 London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LTSR) Mid No.2176 Tank 4-4-2
• L245 London, Tilbury and Southend Railway (LTSR) Baltic Tank 4-6-4

Great Western Railway

• L10 GWR Tank Locomotive 2-4-2
• L39 GWR City Class 4-4-0
• L251 GWR Caerphilly Castle 4-6-0
• L259 GWR Saint Class 4-6-0
• L250 GWR County Tank 4-4-2
• L202 GWR County Express 4-4-0
• L203 GWR Mixed Traffic No.4700 2-8-0
• L204 GWR Duke of Cornwall 4-4-0
• L210 GWR Ex.B.D.Gge. 3512 2-4-0
• L83 GWR Tank No.517 0-4-2
• L154 GWR No.5600 Min. Tank 0-6-2
• L159GWR "Achilles" Single 4-2-2

External links

• Henry Greenly Archive Drawings, 5-inch gauge (maidstone-engineering.com)
• The Henry Greenly Collection of Archive Drawings (archive.is)