These pumps were made by a company named after the founder John Cameron whose works were in Manchester, England and came in a range of sizes from about 6ft tall to near 20ft. in single, twin and tandem cylinder configurations. They were used as boiler feed pumps and for other general pumping duties.

I was shown the drawings for a model Cameron that was offered as a casting kit for a short time in the 80s by Fleet Model Services. The owner of the drawings would not part with their set of castings, and they were also a bit on the small side for my liking, so a cunning plan was hatched to do an all fabricated one at twice the size.

I did not have any good photos of the particular engine that this one is said to be based on but it looks to be in the region of 8ft tall so my model at 16" high puts it at 1:6 scale. (The photo above is of a Cameron with a 5” bore and 6” stroke from the Bolton Steam Museum - Ed).

I redrew most of the larger parts not just to get the revised sizes, but also I find that drawing it out helps me think through how each piece can be fabricated.  I will be using a wide mix of construction methods - welding, silver soldering, cutting from solid and screw and glue to name a few. It is quite a big model but there is no reason to stop anyone following along and making it to the original model size which only had a 4" dia flywheel, or anything between the two. These are a couple of screen shots of the general arrangement, I have not included some of the smaller parts.

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Editor: David Carpenter