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Fowlers Ghost.

Fowlers ghost is a broad guage 2-4-0 locomotive designed by John Fowler for london's 'metropolitan railway' (London underground) and was built by Robert Stephenson and Co to Brunels broad guage of 7ft 1/4 inches.

The locomotive was designed to be semi-fireless to stop build ups of smoke within the covered tunnels in the underground. thus the locomotive had a standard firebox connected to a cumbustion chamber, which inside held firebricks to act as a heat resevoir to continually generate steam whilst moving along the lines, as well as being fitted with a steam condenser to feed water back into the boiler.

The trials for the locomotive took place on the great western railway in october of 1861, resulting in failure with the condenser leaking causing the boiler to run dry and pressure to drop, then resulting in the feed pumps jamming, almost resulting in a boiler explosion.


The locomotive was sold on with plans to Reboiler & convert it to a standard guage engine. But never came to fruition, with the locomotive quietly being sold and then scrapped in 1895.
The nickname of "Fowlers Ghost" Came from "The Railway Magazine" describing the engine in an article in January of 1901.


I hope you enjoy this take on Fowlers ghost a small little project whipped up in effort to combat my boredom with other things. I will admit she wont be 100% accurate to the real deal (The guage being an obvious point) but was made more-so for fun.