Probably Reg Chambers

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Tra-la!

I own what I understand is the last boiler that Reg Chambers built – oh, and the locomotive wrapped around it.

Its Boiler Test Record gives its Identity Number as RC180, built in 2000.

180. Yours is RC 332.

Oh! Ummm….

Perhaps the number is not a straightforward serial number. In any case, although Reg made boilers professionally for many years, over 300 seems a lot given that he was probably among the first in that trade.

If the number genuinely is a serial, starting at Boiler Number 001, I would be wondering when he made my boiler (I bought the loco a few years ago, after the Club replaced it by another); and does it mean he had a boiler for an LBSC 'Juliet' X 2-size, sitting unused in his workshop while he built another 150+? It was definitely unused when we fitted it to the locomotive in 2000; and although I don't know when Reg passed away I don't think it was long after that.

On the other hand, I would be very surprised if Reg ever built 1000+ boilers as 34046 had heard.

So I believe your boiler is by Reg Chambers, but probably not the three-hundred-and-thirty-second. This all suggests he had an ID system of his own that he has taken with him – and a bit less than 20 years ago.

'

Incidentally, the BTR also shows mine as built non-commercially, because Reg built it as a favour for his own society, which 34046 identifies, Weymouth & District MES.

I can't comment on the feed arrangements on the Springbok, but I asked on one of my club's boiler inspectors if he had encountered Reg Chambers' number system.

He has tested one Chambers boiler, but did not know how Reg's system worked so suggested either month or serial-number and year, with the serial being annual rather than continual.

So 766 may mean "July 1966", but it fails with others quoted here.

332 = March 1932? I don't think so. Nor indeed my 180 supposedly = August 2000, on the last boiler he made. That is questioned by the digit 1, and proven incorrect by RC180's blue card dating its Initial Hydraulic Test to 28 March 2000. Not August.

So does 766 mean the 7th made in 1966? Feasibly, until you ask if he really built 18 boilers within the first 3 months of 2000. If I recall aright he had already retired from boiler-making but built RC180 as a favour to his own club.

I am sure Reg's system was logical in its own way, but the more we try to analyse it the more it seems we need that strange round "calculator" that foxed us all here some months back!

Reg was a member of my own society, but there are now only two, possibly three, others who were contemporaries of Reg so might have known his number system. One is me and I don't. I doubt the other one or two would either.

I have owned but subsequently sold a 3 1/2 inch gauge Britannia which had a Reg Chambers made boiler serial nuber RC355 which the paperwork clearly shows was delivered ito the purchaser n April 1972.

so clearly Reg had a serial numbering system which had some logic to it that we as yet can't fathom

the following is from some notes i prepared for a nomograph on my 3 1/2 inch gauge Pacific collection:

"When stripped down a boiler builder’s code “RC355” was discovered at the base of the
backhead. Certainly the original workmanship seemed to indicate a professional builder. Some querying
of dealers in the UK and a subsequent web search revealed that the boiler was built by a Reg Chambers
of Model Steam Boiler Specialists in Weymouth. He delivered the boiler to his customer a W. J.
Robinson of Wimborne Minster in Dorset on 13th April 1972 for a price of £57.00 (approximately £500.00
in 2005 &pound. The boiler was silver soldered throughout, pressure tested to 160 lb/sq in. and given an
insurance industry test certificate number 158. Reg took care to see that no surplus solder was left inside
the boiler especially around the firebox.

Born in 1931, Reg has lived in the UK all his life apart from 3 years in the late sixties when he and
his wife lived in Australia. Reg was a very well regarded professional boiler builder who indicates he was
the first builder to put their “signature” and a serial no. on their boilers to enable tracing the records and
provenance of individual boilers. This proved correct when I called Reg in September 2007, he was able
to put his finger on all this information in the course of the brief phone call. Reg’s personal interest was in
traction engines and he built several, the last of which is to go to his daughter. When he retired from
professional boiler making in 1990 he was charging £400-500 for a new boiler."

in hindsight i should have asked him about his numbering system when i talked to him 14 years ago. My guess is that Reg has unfrotunately passed away.

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I have just sent a message to the one person still about who might know Reg's number system… knowing he probably won't, or will have forgotten.