Description
Phil Girdlestone was one of Camden’s earliest customers, so we are delighted to bring his engineering autobiography to print, albeit sadly posthumously.
Phil started his steam career on the Ffestiniog Railway, where he was to remain for 16 years, during what was a critical time in that railway’s development.. Whilst there he became influenced by the work of David Wardale and Dante Porta on modernising steam power, and applied their principles firstly to the Alco 2-6-2 ‘Mountaineer’, and secondly, and more controversially to the ex Penrhyn Quarry 2-4-0 ‘Linda’ which he rebuilt for coal firing with a Gas Producer system and Lempor exhaust.
In 1985 he joined a team working on an EEC sponsored rehabilitation of steam locomotives for the Sudan Government Railway and subsequently he became CME to a team trying to keep the South African 2 foot gauge Alfred County Railway going. Phil moved to South Africa, where he stayed for the rest of his life, and whilst the ACR project was to ultimately fail, he completely rebuilt and modernised two of the line’ s NGG16 class Garratts to considerable effect. Further work was to involve broad gauge steam in Australia and Russia and narrow gauge steam in Argentina.
136 pages hardback..
