The LNER Encyclopedia

In order to save me a special trip to the NRM, or a speculative purchase of drawings based on titles alone, can anybody please offer, or direct me to, a really clear image, or a good drawing, showing the wheel-driven crank and primary bevel gearbox that drive the first stage of the shaft of a Flaman speed recorder? Ideally I'd like to see the arrangement used on A1/1 Great Northern, including the details of shape and position of the bottom end of the inverted A-frame supporting bracket. As an alternative, a Flaman drive as fitted to any Peppercorn pacific, or just ANY Flaman drive on an LNER loco might do.

Any assistance much appreciated, of course.

Although this failed to draw any response, I still live in hope so here's an update:

A trip to the NRM to view the relevant works drawings was most enlightening. I was able to see exactly what the primary gearobox, the supporting A-frame bracket, the drive crank/arm, the shafts, the secondary gearbox (under the cab rear corner), and the bracket for the Flaman instrument itself were all supposed to look like. Excellent! The tabulated information on the drawings confirmed the primary gearbox design as being correct not only for the 1937-built A4s but also for the 1946 A1/1 rebuild, certain A1s, a B17, blah blah blah......

I then went and looked at Mallard as preserved. Oh dear! Not what I was expecting to see. It's "primary gearbox" looks nothing like the drawings, and appears instead to probably be an adapted secondary gearbox turned on its side and bolted up to the A-frame bracket by means of a right-angled adaptor plate.

Had the originally drawn proposal for different types of primary and secondary gearbox been dropped before manufacture, with one type instead made to do both jobs, I cannot imagine why the drawings would have been subsequently endorsed as applicable to lots of other classes of loco after the 1937 A4s, with no added mention that the drawn primary gearbox was not the type actually fitted! It seems likely to me that Mallard's Flaman primary gearbox has been replaced by a secondary one at a later date, perhaps out of necessity, maybe at the time of post-preservation restoration. Does anybody have any knowledge of this?

Hornby's model of this gearbox, where fitted, looks like the present item on Mallard, so if I'm right it may be the wrong type for all LNER-period applications and maybe for ALL pre-preservation locos!

Ay up!

Someone, i forget who, sent me a piccie of 4470 from the fireman's side that clearly showed a Flaman Speed Recorder as well as a BTH speedo bracket.

Now, who was it?

Since seeing both the drawings, and the different current reality on Mallard, it has become a little easier for me to interpret old photographs. One of these, recently pointed out to me by Morgan Gilbert, shows Great Northern still as 4470 but with the final version of running plate, and I'm pretty convinced that the "just visible" primary gearbox is of the pattern "as drawn" in Doncaster's works drawings.

I am sure i read somewhere that when Mallard was restored they looked to refit the Flaman speed recorder so she looked as she did on the speed run. They struggled to find one and eventually found one in france. This had to have a new dial fitted as it was in KPH. The drive gear is probably whatever parts they found and were fitted to make it look right.

The Flaman recorder in Mallard was not procured from France at the time of Mallard's restorations for preservation. This myth seems to have come about as a result of the statement in part 2A of the RCTS "Locomotives of the LNER" that all the pre war units were scrapped during the war. This is not the case.

The are many features of the Flaman in Mallard which had been updated and modified by 1963 such that it would have been almost impossible to procure it at that time. Even more significantly, a Flaman has recently come up for auction (lot 295 GWRAuction 13 July 2019) which is from a Southern Railway "Lord Nelson". These were fitted in 1938/9. Its design appears identical to that in Mallard and it has a serial number and a mainframe number which are both very close to those of the unit in Mallard. All the evidence therefore points to the lattet being a 1930s original.

Interesting news regarding the recent attempt to auction an authentic Flaman cab instrument, but none of the information presented contradicts the previously presented remarks about the apparent lack of authenticity of the primary bevel gearbox at the "wheel" end of the drive shafts on the preserved / restored Mallard.