Some fantastic news from Statfold Barn, with the completion of Samson’a driving wheels being unveiled.

Below: These three views show the rolling chassis assembled and ready for removal to Beamish where the completed footplate and brake fear can be assembled onto it. We still need to sort out the suspension blocks/springs and paint everything but there are only a couple of weeks work remaining to complete the bottom end of Samson. Many thanks to Paul Ingham for the first three photos taken at the Statfold Barn Open day on Saturday. Below: A further selection courtesy of Bill Dickins.  The coupling rods are wrapped up a top the water tanks, alongside the spur gears which git onto the lugs on the nearside. Statfold very kindly tool our wheel centre blanks and machined these, tyred them, fitted axles and made and machined the crankpins and collars.  Some work on the axleboxes was also carried out – all in all hugely generous and supportive work on this project and something for which we are naturally extremely grateful. As can be seen in all of these views, the wheel diameter and wheelbase are different to the original Samson. This is to allow for additional water capacity as well as to give us a minimum rail head clearance – the original appearing to have a negative clearance for the brake gear which clearly won’t work on our railway (or anybody else’s!). Cornish Hush may have used single bladed points in this regard. We shall find out more as we assemble the rolling chassis over coming weeks!