It is all so very Super

[JimH]

He's obviously used to dealing with aesthetic cripples because he does it in a quiet, "I've been thinking but you may not like it. Here, let me show you" sort of a way. At which point he shows you and you agree that it is probably best if he has the ideas in future.

Next? I was going to make a start on this XI and the Merryweather will need to be finished but the S4 has just been sold so there is a few bob in the pot for the next project. We've had some preliminary discussions and big diesel/petrol lorries have been rejected on the grounds of being a bit easy to do and a bit rubbish to drive.

There have been some drawings for a Foden C Type boiler sitting in the pile for a few years and my grandfather had a D Type tractor for a while which my old man drove a lot. I could be tempted by a project to build one of these but am a bit worried because they are a bit agricultural compared with the Sentinels. This is the sort of thing but it would get built with a big van body the same as the Super.



The D Type was a short wheelbase timber /haulage tractor. This is the old boy outside his filling station with his.



However, pneumatic tyres are a pretty thick red line with us. Solids are a waste of space if you want to go anywhere.

We'll see what crops up. Something usually does. I have floated the idea of blowing the lot on a Bora but that didn't go down too well.

[DodgeRover]

If you started with a blank sheet to design the best steam wagon you could - what would you do differently to the Sentinel?
Which wagon would be closest to your ideal spec - could you build something using an existing 50s lorry chassis? A Chinese 6 maybe done as a Showmans haulage special with a steam generator for running a ride and a living area, showmen are well known for enjoying chopping and changing so pretty much anything could be argued to be in the correct spirit.

[JimH]

It is an interesting idea. Someone has already built a waggon using a Sentinel shunter engine and boiler (much bigger than a waggon boiler) built into a 1960s Chinese six ERF chassis but that is a bit home brewed.

I suppose it would come down to how you wanted to generate your steam. If it was to be coal fired then you are going to be stuck with the boiler at the front and that is going to force you to have a pair of axles at the front to deal with the perennial problem of the front wheels being massively overloaded. If you go oil fired then the boiler can go anywhere as well as be lighter and more compact. The problem you run up against there is that if you are going to burn oil you may as well have a diesel engine which was really the problem that Doble came up against. By the time he was farting around at Sentinel we had Gardners and gearboxes that mostly worked so losing payload to a boiler and water supply was a bit silly.

I have always maintained that Sentinel may have had a market in heavy haulage tractors for which steam power would have been ideally suited. Perhaps it might be interesting to have a guess at what Sentinel might have designed as a heavy haulage tractor to compete with the big Scammells. It would be an interesting back axle, that's for sure.

[DodgeRover]

I can see exactly what you mean regarding burning oil, How much energy do you need to build pressure and then keep steaming? Could propane be an option?

[JimH]

Gas firing is an option but you need so much of it. When we played around oil firing the S4 we were using a Riello two stage burner rated at 330KW. You would need a pretty big gas tank to get anywhere. Now, the Sentinel's boiler was not exactly optimised for burning oil rather than coal and if you were designing an oil fired boiler you would almost certainly end up with some sort of tubular flash boiler to get the volume right down and the heating area right up but those numbers are not a bad starting point for what you might need.

[JimH]

Signwriter has been back for the past three days so there is a bit more progress to attempt to show through some crappy snaps. Start of the lettering on the nearside of the body.



Meanwhile the offside is getting more colourful with blocking and drop shadow. Chalk marks all over the place.



Close up on the finished letters



There is some slight blending on the curved letters (no more than a few flicks of the brush) to go on once the paint has dried. He advised against proper blending because it starts to get too fairground.



United on the offside is done now. It took a while to get the colours right. This is perhaps a little more fairground for our tastes but it issems to be very close for the era and the solitary photograph we are working from. At the moment the thinking is there will be a "Unity is strength" between UNITED and the rest of the lettering.



A bit crowded with scaffold and the rest but it's getting there. Fancy wheatsheafs to go on the cab sides yet.

[Hooli]

Looking damn good to me.

[mercrocker]

Fantastic to see all these skills still in use too.

[JimH]

The lad seems to be busy enough. Interestingly started as a YTS.

[DodgeRover]

Lovely that