Matt Chivers Workshop

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Matt Chivers Workshop

Engineering, Welding & Fabrication in Heritage and New build Steam locomotives for Road & Rail.

Currently building a 7.25” Gauge Tinkerbell Class Steam Locomotive 🚂👍.

24/12/2025

Happy Christmas to all my fantastic followers! I hope you all have a wonderful time! I’m wondering if I can sneak an hour or two in the workshop… 🤔🤣.

23/12/2025

This is mighty impressive…. It’s like a bigger version of what I’m doing in my workshop!

Hmmm 🤔 this gives me an idea!!

20/12/2025

What else to do on a cold Saturday but editing the next video while watching Santa specials on the Ffestiniog & Welsh Highland Railways! Probably the last video of the year… Very busy with all the festive activities happening over the next couple of weeks!

Oh you didn’t know I did YouTube? Well I document the building of my 7.25inch gauge Tinkerbell class live steam locomotive from scratch. It’s packed full of the trials and tribulations of building a locomotive. Give it a whirl, you may like it…. https://youtube.com/?si=-EDy0q6SQbM2WsUP

2026 I think is going to be an interesting one for the channel as we are entering the end of the chassis phase. There are some big videos to come, some big things to announce and show. And maybe a new direction! Although filming takes the time, I do enjoy it, the editing, the release of the video, the comments, the support… it makes it all worthwhile and very enjoyable.

18/12/2025

The other woman… Bridget the Bridgeport Mill! One of the best purchases I ever made at a bargain price. I bought this Bridgeport Milling Machine off facebook marketplace for very little and underneath the years of dirt, dust and grime was a beautiful hardly worn but abused machine. It has its war wounds and clearly was used by people who didn’t know what they were doing.

After a good scrub it came up well, but one thing that really needs looking at is the automatic quill feed, it’s clearly been damaged at some point in its life, as it just doesn’t stay engaged or any slight pressure it stops working. Having given it a once over… the issue is deeper than the normal adjustments, as these are now maxed out.

Hopefully the new year we can have a bit of time and fix this issue!! I do love taking things apart!! Seeing how they work and fixing them.

17/12/2025

Weather has turned, the nights are longer and the workshop has become cold and lifeless! I really do dislike this time of the year, we aren’t even at the coldest. My steam locomotive build waits patiently for me to do a bit more on it… currently working on the reverser mechanism using the Bridgeport and the Warco lathe.

2026 is going to be a huge year, in many aspects and many changes to come, but hopefully one thing we will see…. Is steam in this loco!!

10/12/2025

A trip around Thompson Park Miniature Railway in Burnley, Lancashire. The 7 1/4” locomotive is a fantastically built Romulus, ‘Fagan’, which runs flawlessly!! Unusually it has been built with Baker Valve Gear and it maybe small but it could pull a house down.

I had the opportunity to have a turn at the controls and it ran smoothly! It’s only one of a small handful of locomotives I’ve driven that the injector’s work first time every time no matter the pressure!!

Thompson Park is really a hidden gem, well worth a visit when they open in spring!

09/12/2025

When you randomly look on an old SLR camera only to find pictures of trains from 2017!! Here we have Festiniog & Welsh Highland railways Beyer Peacock Garratt no.143 at Porthmadog station taken from Blaenau bound train.

The NGG16s are the largest and amongst the most powerful steam locomotives ever built for 2 ft gauge and were originally designed for work on the South African Railways. These were the perfect locomotives for the gradient intense Welsh Highland Railway in North Wales when the FR began rebuilding the railway.

I know a story or two about their arrival to the FR… I was a volunteer back then!!

Wouldn’t one of these be great on 7.25” gauge…. I believe there are a couple!!

08/12/2025

From where we started…. To where we are! ‘Tinkerbell class’, 7.25” gauge live steam locomotive build. Built in a home workshop, by my hands, on my machines. Will we see it steam in 2026?? Stay tuned by following for more updates.

Disclaimer: I didn’t obviously make the laser cut parts… but I did produce the CAD files 🤪🤪🤪

05/12/2025

Valve rods are on the steam loco build!! What a difference they make to the project Tinkerbell build.. these are the final major parts for the valve gear below the footplate. There are some details to attend to, but all can be done before it’s all painted! Got to make the reverser and pipework for the cylinders and then we are on to testing the chassis on air. Most of these parts have been made on the Bridgeport mill, Warco and Harrison Lathe.

04/12/2025

Can we jump to the steam season please? So we can go play trains in the warm weather!! The beautiful River Class steam locomotives ‘Afon Glaslyn’ and ‘Tarn Beck’ stretching their legs on the privately owned Littledale Light Railway.

The locomotives were built by the late Gerry Clarke. His engineering skills and attention to detail are on another level, as can be seen in these locomotives. Gerry is the reason I started building 7 1/4” gauge steam locomotives, and he is one of my top influences in engineering. I only ever met him briefly in 2009 at the 7 1/4” gauge society AGM at Leyland, where these beauties were unveiled. I have to thank Mike Cave, who owns ‘Tarn Beck’, as he has told me so much about his friend Gerry. If I could be 1% the engineer Gerry was, I’ll be happy!!

03/12/2025

Wrapping up work on the valve knuckle joints for the Bridgeport mill and quickly turning a couple of pins on the lathe - the results are these beauties for my steam locomotive build!! Complete with locking plates to keep everything secure. Every part brings me one step closer to getting it running!

02/12/2025

Milling a pair of knuckle joints for the valve rods on my steam locomotive project. The Bridgeport milling machine is helping me extract the shape from the steel, and a quick spin on the rotary table will finish them off!! Ohh yeah!

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