A selection of (mainly official Swindon) drawings of locomotives, coaches and goods wagons.
I have learned that its easy to be seduced by the quality of the draughtsmanship of the original GWR drawings into supposing that these general arrangement drawings comprise a definitive reference for modellers. This doesn't seem to be the case. Even at my level of competence I can detect inconsistencies - safety valve covers are rarely symmetrical for instance - and even distortions. Some of these probably came in various reproductions along the way, but some seem to me to be original. I am not a trained engineer, nor do I know much about heavy engineering practice, but I am quite sure that all manufacture was done from the numerous detailed drawings of each component, and that whilst you can almost certainly trust the dimensions written on drawings, scaling dimensions from them should be done with caution.
I created this series of drawings to illustrate development and
variations caused by boiler changes and other developments in various
classes and to illustrate some pieces I have written as features for the
GWR Modelling Website.
They are worked up from the GWR Diagrams, so they have all their
limitations and more besides. For more information about the limitations
of these sketches see this page about how I
created them.
All contributions of copyright-free Official GWR drawings for this collection are welcome.
To contact the compiler please use this form