Peter Fagg’s
BENJAMIN GOODFELLOW ENGINE

This fine model of a Four Pillar Benjamin Goodfellow Workshop Engine of 1851 was displayed by Peter Fagg at the last Sandown Park exhibition.

A model of the Goodfellow overcrank engine was first produced by Anthony Mount and described in a series of articles in Engineering in Miniature magazine. Anthony first came across this engine in the erstwhile  Brighton and Hove Engineerium. He explains: “It is not a huge engine, the flywheel being about 1500mm (5ft) diameter. It is a delightful engine being from about the mid nineteenth century and was used to drive a workshop. The Goodfellow Company went on to build many large mill engines for the textile industry.”

George Watkins who photographed the engine in the 1950s quotes the engine as being 10hp with a pressure of 130psi and running at 90rpm. The engine was installed in the cotton mill fitting shop of E. & G. Hindle Ltd, Bastfield Mill, Blackburn. It was built in 1851 and was still in use in the 1950s driving the fitting shed shop when the main weaving shed engine was stopped.

Anthony says: “Our little engine is in classical architectural style, lightly built and quite tall for its size. Being a small engine I decided to make the model a reason able size so that the individual parts were not too small, opting for a 200mm (8”) diameter flywheel, so it is still within the capacity of most model engineers’ lathes, for example the Myford Series 7 lathes will take just under 250mm (10”) in the gap.”