Curly Lawrence

Lillian "Curly" Lawrence, known as LBSC, was one of Britain's most prolific and well known model or scale-steam-locomotive designers. LBSC were the initials of Britain's London, Brighton and South Coast Railway. LBSC, “Curly” to his friends, was born 27 September 1883 and christened William Morris Benjamin later changing his surname to Mathieson when his father changed the family name. After 1902 William changed his name to Lillian Lawrence; why he chose a female name is unclear, however he was nicknamed "Dolly" at school by account of his long, blond, curly hair, and was pictured on occasion, wearing female shoes and clothing while driving his models. Despite his 'unusual make up' as described by his friend George Barlow in the foreword to Brian Hollingsworth's biography, his retiring nature, and the prejudices that may have existed in 1930's, he was readily accepted as an expert live steam model engineer. Curly had been making steam engines from tins and bits and pieces since childhood and his engineering skills were largely self taught. In 1908 he married Sarah Munt otherwise known as Mabel. Curly loved steam locomotives from the time he was a child and spent several years in the employ of the LBSC Railway, from which he later adopted his pen name.

The turning point in LBSC’s life was in 1922 when he sparked what became known as the "battle of the boilers" with Henry Greenly. Within two and half years he was established as one of the top professionals in scale or model engineering. LBSC’s contention was that scale locomotives should be fitted with fire-tube boilers modeled very closely on full size locomotive practice i.e. be coal fired, with multiple fire-tubes and a number of superheater elements, as compared with then commercial and hobbyist practice of building spirit fuelled, water-tube boilers.

LBSC’s live steam locomotive type boilers proved to be outstanding steamers, quite capable of hauling real passengers. His 2½ inch gauge four coupled wheel locomotive, Ayesha (named after a character in the novel She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard), could haul 200 lb, when the equivalent sized spirit fired water-tube locomotives of the day could only haul 30 lb. LBSC demonstrated this locomotive at the Society of Model & Experimental Engineers meeting in London in July 1922, as a result of which he was invited to contribute an article to Model Engineer magazine describing its construction. A further challenge in 1924 – the "battle of the boilers" – between a Henry Greenly designed Bassett-Lowke spirit fired locomotive and one of LBSC’s finally vindicated his claims although it led to a lifelong animosity between him and Greenly.Ayesha, now owned by The National 2½ in Gauge Association, was steamed in June 2016 for the first time in more than 50 years, and after little more than a hydraulic boiler test ran successfully more than 90 years after the locomotive was built by LBSC. To see photos of this historic locomotive see John Baguley's website

...
Wikipedia