[Accrs] Firing Up and Running the WWI Davenport Trench Locomotive!

[Jeff Davies]

Hi Tony, 
What a great link.   Winton Brown was a mechanical engineer and genius who lived in Danville on Alamantos drive.  He was a past president of Golden Gate Live Steamers . He ran a business that made 7 1/2  & 15” gauge live steam locos and parts  for 1 1/2 & 3 inch scale . His locomotives were of extreme quality based on 1880’s prototypes . Many amusement parks ran them . 
In 1969 when I was 13 , I asked and was given a tour of his shop . It was spell binding !  Naturally , I asked if I could work for him for the summer because I wanted to build a live steam locomotive. 
I’m sure he’d heard that a thousand times from starry eyed kids so he said no, he didn’t need an apprentice and to start off building a freight car first . He was genuinely surprised when I said I had already done that and unstrapped a Bentondoff truck I had made from my bike . (I was a pretty industrious kid considering I didn’t have a dad) . Winton looked it over and although it was wood, he was very impressed and gave me quite a quiz . He still didn’t hire me though.   I hired out at a cabinet shop two days later … and Winton called me back the day after that and offered me an apprenticeship with pay! 
I was full of high ideals and told him I’d feel bad about quitting the cabinet shop just days after them giving me a job. … I can still hear his voice on the phone kindly but firmly asking me  “young man are you sure about this, what I’m offering you is very unusual. ”  I said   “I guess so.”  That was unquestionably the stupidest thing I have ever done or said in my entire life . 
The compressor is from his 3” scale line.  It was his design and offered built up or plain iron castings and drawings .  His dictations on boiler size and wall thicknesses along with steam power calculations that he published as a small book are still considered gospel by the live steam guys. Mr. Winton Brown passed away in the early 90ties .  That compressor would have been designed or made in the 60ties  . 
His line of locos  drawings and patterns were bought by Mammoth locomotive works but I don’t know if still available. 
Sent from my iPhone

> On Aug 11, 2023, at 6:24 PM, Tony Long <tony.long at outlook.com> wrote:
> 
> Message From: Tony Long  tony.long at outlook.com
> 
> 
> 
> Check this out.   Anyone familiar with the WINTON air compressor – notice the label with DANVILLE,CA.
>  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SGkMlLqxHTE
>  
>  
> 
>  
>  
>  
>  
>  
> _______________________________________________
> Accrs mailing list
> Accrs at mail.accrs.org
> https://mail.accrs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/accrs
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://mail.accrs.org/archives/accrs/attachments/20230811/877a295e/attachment-0001.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: E1006280EA3F465E8ABF926C2F9DD7E0.png
Type: image/png
Size: 350941 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <https://mail.accrs.org/archives/accrs/attachments/20230811/877a295e/attachment-0001.png>