Meridian & Western No. 9 — steam train

An 1880s American coal-burning steam train - engine, coal car and passenger car - on its own ballasted track. The engine carries a red cowcatcher, four small leading wheels and four tall spoked driving wheels with the rods working between them, a green boiler with brass bands and domes, a bell, a whistle, a big oil headlamp and the plain straight chimney of a coal burner. Its wooden cab holds the firehole door, the gauges, the regulator and reversing levers, and a seat for each of the crew. The coal car carries a real heaped load standing above the tank sides, with the road name signwritten in gold along it. The passenger car has the raised clerestory roof of the period, arched window frames, gold-lined panels and open end platforms with iron railings. Inside: twenty-four seats, a coal stove with its chimney through the roof, and oil lamps down the centre. Around two thousand one hundred pieces.