Welcome to Northernsteam.com

Hello, my name's Jim Nolan and I live in the North East of England, a lover of all things engineering and particularly steam driven, 7.25” gauge live steam at that.

Having finished off a 1/3 full size traction engine my thoughts turned to what next. For a change I fancied building a locomotive and this web site is a record of my highs and lows on a journey I am still taking.

So what to build? Well I would have loved to build either a New York Central J1, 4-6-4 Hudson, a 4-8-4 Niagara, or perhaps a Norfolk & Western J or A class. But I found the logistics of getting drawings or even finding them to be too big a hurdle to take on as a first step.

Then I read the book by David Wardale, “The Red Devil”. This detailed his efforts in improving a 25NC 4-8-4 locomotive for South African Railways. I was captivated, not only was the loco built in the UK by North British, but I could still get drawings and it was a Northern just like the J or the Niagara.

So here we go, I started turning perfectly good metal into swarf about two years ago. So I have a fair cushion and hope to add updates as time permits. Any comments questions just press the link.

Slow updates. June 08

You might have noticed they are few and far between at the moment, so just a short explanation why. I have been for the last 15 months, working about 400 miles from home and have very limited time to get anything done. So when its a toss up between the workshop and updates the workshop is winning.