GWR 517 drawings

Does anybody know where a set of drawings for the 517 class can be obtained from, or if they even exist?
Thank you

 

Good places to start for full on manufacturing drawings would be STEAM Museum at Swindon or Search Engine at the NRM. Both have email enquiries on their websites, and the GWS at Didcot may be worth a try too.

For modelling, have a look back through Railway Modellers as over the years they've done a great deal of high quality drawings, including many by the much respected Ian Beattie. I don't know if there is a database listing these anywhere to help your search - might be worth trying to contact their offices.

Alternatively if all avenues are unsuccessful it shouldn't be impossible to find the drawings for the much more well known and loved 14xx/48xx/58xx 0-4-2Ts, which of course were just updated 517s. It might be possible to use such drawings as a starting point compared with photos to create usable drawings yourself?

 

There were original GWR drawings published in either British Railway Journal or Great Western Journal of the sadle tank version

David

 

Great Western Journals No 74 (Spring 2010) and 75 (Summer 2010) have frame plan drawings. A further look back through the GWJ's may well produce further drawings as I'm sure I've seen other articles on the class. It just depends what you want to achieve? A model, or a full size new build, for which you will probably need to find hundreds of drawings for the individual components?

 

Note that there's not really any such thing as *a* set of 517 drawings. The class had more variations than the entire body of classical music... So you've got to pick your era and your original batch of 517s as a starting point, and then zero in on the detail as per date and location of the last lot of major changes - and even then really you have to pick an individual loco you can get good photos and information for...

 

There doesn't appear to be much in the way of a "lot list" either for these, unlike later classes.
Lots D,G,H,I,R,S,W,Z,C2 shows a boiler drawing No 12552, Lots E,F,G,H,W - 10692

Going to take a bit of digging.