The P2 Steam Locomotive Company has confirmed that the six completed coupling rods for London and North Eastern Railway (LNER) P2 No.2007 “Prince of Wales” have been delivered to Darlington Locomotive Works.
Back in April 2018, the company launched The Motion Club to raise funds for the £210,000 cost to construct the nine pieces of the heavy motion rods.
After only seven weeks, over 25% of the total amount had been pledged, with May 2018 seeing the order for all nine components placed with Stephenson (Engineering) Ltd of Manchester.
Three years later and six of the nine rods are complete, the other three due to completed this year and with 178 supporters pledging £178,000. For more information or to join The Motion Club, please click here to visit their website.
Progress on other parts of the locomotive are continuing well, with attention now turning to altering the Lentz rotary cam poppet valve gear to improve the design and ensure it will work well for the needs of “Prince of Wales”.
The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust Trustee Mark Allatt commented: “We are delighted with the support the project to build Britain's most powerful steam locomotive has received since its launch over seven years ago. With over £3.4m spent and around £3.9m donated to-date of the estimated £5m required, we remain on-track for completion within three years. However, to maintain this progress we need to raise £700,000 per year and we are still seeking to recruit members of The Motion Club in order to complete the funding for the heavy motion as well as additional ‘P2 for the price of a pint of beer a week' regular donors or covenantors.”
Director of P2 Engineering at The A1 Steam Locomotive Trust David Elliott added: “The delivery of the final pair of coupling rods for Prince of Wales is a major step forward for the project, especially given the limitations of working during the COVID-19 pandemic. The machining of each rod by Stephenson (Engineering) takes around 100 hours. The next few months will see the completion of all of the heavy motion and the trial fitting of the coupling rods to the engine – creating the first tender-engine standard gauge ‘Mikado' in the UK since 1945.”
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I have to admit that the P2 looks a lot more normal than I expected it would. Quite a nice design, in fact!