Baloo: A Brief History
“Baloo” is a 7.25″ gauge freelance steam locomotive which I have been in the process of restoring to working order for frankly too many years. As I’ve had to learn almost every single necessary skill from scratch through the process there has been a lot of do and re-do at ever stage.
In contrast to the digital world of homelabs, IT and live streaming video games the topic here is TRAINS. Not a single one of you should be surprised as I don’t hide my love of the railways from anyone, it does permeate thorough all my other projects, and since my audience consists of friends, like minded individuals and for the most part people are somewhat aware of the existence of this project anyway I’ve finally been encouraged to complete this post which has been in my drafts in some way or another since 2009!
Origins
The engine was constructed by an old friend of my family, and a friend of mine as I grew up, who made his name as a bit of a local legend. He built his fame for madly taking on the world in a way that got things done against all odds and his friendly ruthless attitude for never giving up or wasting time. If it worked right, then it worked.
The engine itself was not his first built. Many more had been built before Baloo to drawings, to scale and to a high engineering standard but this ‘class’ is fictitious. Designed to be easy for him to maintain with basic tools and off the shelf automotive and plumbing parts there’s far more to its design story than I can just cram into a post without the interesting context behind each decision. The engine was built to be played with, it was for driving and that’s all. Baloo received the number 703 as it was the third iteration of this design – more about that later.
Of course there was side joke. The locomotive is themed on the Great Eastern Railway locomotive design style as a preference of the builder but didn’t exist in history and from time to time you come across people who would find this almost offensive to their strict historical interests. If you think that’s ridiculous you luckily haven’t met anyone so entitled that they believe their view of the world should guide what you do for fun in your hobby. Whenever these people arose the story would be spun that the locomotive was a “Kipling Class”, a little known experimental mogul design which never took off, all received names from jungle book characters and none of the class had survived. Often the confidence in delivery and collection of supporting ‘evidence‘ would lead these people to frantically scrawl down numbers, take pictures and scuttle away much to the merriment of anyone in on the joke.
Brief History
You’ve read that this engine was number three but there’s no mention of the first or second?
Sadly the first locomotive, presumably No.701, was named Mowgli and left ownership of the builder when it was stolen from his workshop. To me this is a historic ‘long time ago’ as I’ve no dates, but it was before me time. Presumed gone forever and as building was part of the hobby another locomotive was constructed, Baloo, No.703.
Firstly, what? What happened to 702? – Well, 702 was already mid-construction for a friend and rolled out of the workshop in M&GN brown livery named “Bahgeera” shortly before work began on 703.
Secondly – Mowgli showed up! About 30 years later, so I’m told, and a few years ago now, some members of the model engineering club spotted the distinctive freelance design on everyone’s favourite auction site! It had long crossed the country and been through many owners and now masqueraded as a loosely great western themed locomotive in livery. Bravely one of the model club actually contacted the seller and gave them the full history of the engine – the crime case had been closed far too many years ago to recover anything and the current owner was so far detached from the time it was stolen there’s no sense in doing any more than taking comfort in knowing the locomotive is now re-attached to its legacy.
Thirdly? .. It happened again. I had been learning to drive and fire locomotives from 1:1 scale all the way down to driving Baloo, spending time sponging knowledge from this brilliant man when the news came that workshop had been broken into and Baloo had been stolen.
Tragically the loco was seemingly stolen to order for the valuable materials – the full copper boiler – and in a terrible twist of fate the builder being who he was had never used traditional materials. The boiler was a single piece of cold drawn steel pressure pipe with two ends welded on. Keeping it dead simple to build but making it disposable with a comparatively short lifespan (fine, build another one?), and making it worthless to the thieves.
So how come I now have it? I didn’t steal it. It came back!
After trashing the locomotive completely in an effort to remove it’s traceable appearance it appeared in a local auction but thanks once again to the distinctive freelance design it was still recognised immediately. Also thanks to previous experience the builder had stamped his name in so many hard to find places that simply removing a few covers revealed his name and details and the locomotive was returned. We were due to restore the engine together and I looked forward to learning so much in the process. With access to his workshop it looked set to be a good summer that next year.
That doesn’t answer why I have the loco in my possession though. That’s another tragic twist in the story. The builder sadly passed away very suddenly not long after the return of the locomotive and never had the chance to even examine the job. The death of the local hero swept through huge numbers of communities which didn’t turn out to be limited to being all that local. As I was a local I helped the family manage this and I helped coordinate clearing his workshop. In the process of this I was offered the opportunity to take on the project we would have shared, on my own – take the locomotive, get it running again. All the knowledge of how it was built had just left this world so I now had an immense broken puzzle to take to pieces, fix and put back together.
