MEETING A VETERAN MODEL ENGINEER
Our editor is inspired by a meeting with a former footplateman and lifelong model engineer.
Imust admit I had not heard of Dennis Herbert before my visit to Wythall Miniature Railway but several readers may well have done. Now a mere 87 years of age, Dennis is a former career footplateman with British Railways, starting with steam, continuing into the diesel and electric age up to the era of high-speed trains. He’s driven a very wide variety of locomotives, up to Gresley Pacifics and can remember some pretty special duties, including carrying her Majesty the Queen on the Royal Train.
His accomplishments on the railways were documented in Birmingham Footplateman, a Job for Life, published in 2007 by Oakwood Press and a cracking good read. But Dennis has also written a second book, The Mettle for Metal – Reminiscences of a Model Engineer, documenting his lifelong hobby, for which he was totally self-taught.
Talking to members of the Elmdon club it was clear just how much
Dennis invests into his hobby. His current project is overhauling the club’s Black 5 4-6-0, but it seemed just about everything club chairman Reece Greenstreet described included the words “Dennis helped with that,” or Dennis did that...”
The best was to come, however, as trustee Denis Chick said we were going to Dennis’s house; “You have to see the King.” In the garage stood a pristine 7¼-inch GWR King 4-6-0, built by Dennis, quite recently and over just eight years. “I cut the frames out of sheet steel on that,” he said, pointing to a very ancient Workmate bench hanging on the garage wall.
“‘I cut the frames out of sheet steel on that,’ he said, pointing to a very ancient Workmate
bench hanging on the garage
wall...”
Three times no
The King story began when Dennis was contacted by former colleagues at the Bromsgrove Society, who were clearing the workshop of a deceased member and had found a full set of King castings, plus drawings. “They asked if I wanted to buy it but I said it’s too late in my life to start such a project. I refused it three times, and then they said ‘if you don’t have them they are going in a skip because the widow wants the workshop cleared, would you give us £500? I couldn’t turn it down.”
“I thought I’ll have a go at the parts I think I’ll have trouble with and see how far I get. I’d never made a crankshaft before so I set to and it went remarkably well.”
Dennis was initially stumped by the odd ‘joggle’ in the frame to accommodate the front bogie, and for accuracy milled it from solid.
“It advanced from there – I’d got the chassis well underway and I was at Wythall one day and a fellow came in, we were talking he said he used to do a bit years ago. He added he’d sold all his machinery – ‘I don’t do anything now, but I did do the Reeves drawings for the King...’ He turned out to be Trevor Shortland, and the castings I got were from the man Trevor had sold all his stuff to – small world...”
Trevor then assisted with the build and became a good friend. “He never did any of the machining but he came up with patterns and such, I couldn’t have done it without him – I told him I’d like the loco to look as they did when I worked on them in BR days, but I have no chance of being able to make the double chimney – next thing he turned up with a pattern for the double chimney which I took to a fellow in Wolverhampton and got it cast for me.”
During our all too short visit to Dennis’s (I could have listened to his tales all day), he showed us his very compact but also highly productive workshop. This is where he has carried out all the work on his many model engineering projects, which have ranged from building the King to a host of clocks – his house includes several, of all types and sizes, all made by Dennis including the wood cases and the gears cut on a specific tool he made for the purpose.
The visit to Dennis provided a special end to an enjoyable day at Wythall – time spent with a highly skilled, and still equally enthusiastic, lifelong model engineer...