3'' Foden Steam Lorry

Here we have a particularly well made 3" Foden Steam Lorry and riding/water cart. A sad tale this one! We sold this lovely Foden for £10,950 a few weeks ago, and as is the usual modus operendai here at Steam Workshop, when the customer pressed the 'go' button, we started working our way through the usual testing and re-commissioning process in our workshops. We steamed it successfully and it ran beautifully during the customer's visit with only a couple of very minor tweaks to things like glands and a tiny nip up on the driving chains.

There appeared however to be a couple of points behind the frame where steam was escaping from the stay bolts on the side of the boiler. Having chatted to the builder we found out that the construction was with nutted stay bolts, which had probably worked loose behind the frame, and would probably nip up. We stripped the engine down and took the boiler out of the frames to address the stays as a routine part of the commissioning and fault rectifying process here at Steam Workshop, but upon inspection under hydraulically testing we found a pin hole in the side of the firebox which when prodded turned into a beautiful 1/8" hole. Ultrasound testing revealed a thinning of the firebox outer wrapper down to 1.8mm at that point, with a nominal 2.5 everywhere else. Interestingly the original designed manufacture thickness was 1/8th steel plate, the same material thickness being specified for either a copper boiler or a steel one, so the 2.5mm measurements everywhere else are not significantly thinned from the boiler as built. But clearly it doesn't have to thin significantly before you are in danger of localised spots where problems could,.... and in this case have occurred.

As a result, this is now offered as what is more or less an exhibition quality model in terms of engineering and finish, but as a project with a boiler that needs either significant work or renewal, and as models go, this is definitely very worthy of that investment.