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Description: | ROYAL SCOT MINIATURE LOCOMOTIVE BUILT BY DOUGLAS ARUNDEL OF NEWARK A fully operational, steam-powered model of the LMS locomotive 6100 Royal Scot built by Douglas Arundel in 1972. For some years from the late 1960s the firm of D. Arundel & Co engineers and machine manufacturers of Farndon Road, Newark serviced the miniature rolling stock that hauled visitors around Lord Grettons estate at Stapleford Park near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. In c.1969 Mr Arundel received from Stapleford the disassembled pieces of a working model of the LMS locomotive 6100 Royal Scot, and, together with Newark motor mechanic, Mr Bill Whiteley, began the task of reconstructing it. Many new parts needed to be machined from scratch at Mr Arundels Farndon Road works, and all-in-all restoration of the locomotive took fully three years. The finished model 12ft in length and weighing in excess of 1 ton was constructed to a scale of 2 ½ inches to 1ft. and ran on rails with a 10 ¼ inch gauge. The locomotive was exhibited at the prestigious annual Model Engineers Exhibition at Londons Seymour Hall before being put to work at Stapleford Park in 1972. It could pull a trainload of around 50 sightseers at a top speed of 12 m.p.h.
Douglas Arundel was born in Newark on 22nd November 1924. His father, Edgar, was Chief Chemist at Cafferata and Co, the Newark gypsum mining and brick-making company and Douglas, when he attended the Magnus Grammar School in Newark, excelled at mathematics and the sciences. After leaving school Douglas undertook a five year apprenticeship at Worthington-Simpson Ltd., pump manufacturers of Balderton near Newark. Alongside his technical work at Worthington-Simpsons, Douglas had always pursued engineering as a hobby with a fully equipped workshop and lathe at home where he designed and built models powered by steam or electricity. After the Second World War (during which he served in the Auxiliary Fire Service (AFS) in Newark), Douglas set up his own small engineering business at Mills Drive on Farndon Road, Newark. (in the former premises of Horace Mills basket works) Originally, the business D. Arundel and Co. concerned itself with general engineering, but came increasingly to specialise in the design and manufacture of woodworking lathes and machinery. Over the years the business also produced ventilation systems, engineering models, and, for a time, even experimented with growing mushrooms. Model-making is perhaps the area for which Douglas is most fondly remembered. He produced a number of steam or electrically powered passenger hauling model locomotives for use on miniature tourist railways at country houses, notably at Lord Grettons estate at Stapleford Park near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire. Douglas home was at No.47 Hawton Road, Newark, where, in 1980, he married Rosamund Ford (known as April). In 1988 the Arundel woodworking and machinery business was taken over by a Sheffield-based company. All manufacturing was transferred to Sheffield although Douglas remained a consultant until his retirement in 1990. He died on 1st July 1997 aged 72. | Format: | JPEG/IMAGE | License: | http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/uk/ | Publisher: | North East Midland Photographic Record | Subjects: | select Please | Source: | Picture the Past OAI feed | Creator: | Arundel, Douglas | Identifier: | http://www.picturethepast.org.uk/fronten... | Language: | EN-GB | Format: | JPEG/IMAGE | Go to resource |
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