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One warm summer evening in 1994 Barry Reeves was looking forward to running something on his garden railway after a frustrating day at work. Barry's one steam locomotive was temporarily out of service and all three battery powered engines were suffering from flat batteries.

Frustration grew into asking why garden railways could have steam locomotives which really burned coal and were miniature versions of the "real thing" but not have diesel locomotives which were also miniature versions of the "real thing". Thus began a 5 1/2 year adventure which was the building of the Pilgrim Pioneer.

While not the first attempt at building miniature diesel-electric locomotives the Pilgrim Pioneer has shown that diesel-electric power for 16mm and G scale garden railways is perfectly possible. The Pioneer is very controllable and not any faster than a narrow gauge locomotive should be. The exhaust plume is realistic but by no means excessive and noise level is compatible to an electric lawn mower. Within a distance of one metre of the locomotive when running voices have to be raised but beyond that the noise level is unobtrusive.

The Pioneer is 20 " long, appx 5" wide and 6 ¼" high. It weighs an impressive 25 lbs all of which is carried on 4 axles.

Power is generated by a 3.5 cc Irvine aero diesel engine (no longer produced) driving a large electric motor acting as both starter and dynamo. Electric power thus produced is used to drive four RG7 traction motors geared 30:1. Radio control is not used with the engine speed used to determine the voltage supplied to the traction motors and thus the locomotive's speed.

Haulage capacity is immense. It will comfortably start a 16 coach train on a 1:30 gradient and at the Quainton Railway Centre in the summer of 2000 it hauled a train of 50 vehicles (186 axles) around the dual gauge circuit. It did this for several laps without problem.

Completed in the summer of 1999 an intensive period of testing and fault finding took place and by early 2000 the locomotive was running reliably. It was painted and exhibited at the AGM that year of the Association of 16mm Narrow Gauge Modellers where it won a Highly Commended award.