The Battle of the Boilers - a Centenary Celebration

2024 marks the centenary of the most famous contest in model engineering history: the ‘Battle of the Boilers’ - leading model railway professionals W.J. Bassett-Lowke and Henry Greenly versus Lillian ‘Curly’ Lawrence alias LBSC. Amazingly both competing locomotives are still with us: Curly's coal-fired Atlantic Ayesha is maintained in working order by the National 2½ Inch Gauge Association while Greenly's spirit-fired Challenger 2-8-2 has recently been restored by owner Simon Hudson and The Steam Workshop. The contest took place at the 1924 Model Engineer Exhibition following two years of debate in the magazine over the relative merits of coal and spirit firing. It is usually considered to have started when James Leeming wrote to the Model Engineer in January 1922 complaining about the poor performance of his spirit-fired Great Central…

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Model Engineer (Digital) - 1 Issue, Issue 4750

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