Now that the Jubilee has gone off to be weathered, I've started to prepare my Stanier Caprotti Black 5 for painting. This entails stripping it down for degreasing and to give access for painting. The disassembly is quite complicated and has to be done in a specific sequence to get access to various fixing screws. Due to the short cab sides and exposed, open type steps, the pipework under the cab has had to be split between the footplate unit, the chassis mainframes and a separate carrier plate at the rear end. In order to dismantle the loco, first the tender is disconnected, then the pipe carrier plate is removed to reveal the screw which hold the footplate to the chassis. As built, the boiler can then be removed from the footplate as it was fixed by two screws under the saddle and by a pin engaging in the cab front at the firebox end.

Here are the main components after separation. The chassis will be broken down into its component parts for me to paint shortly.

The separate pipe carrier also has the rear section of the brake rigging attached. The brake pull rod and the exhaust steam injector pipe plug into their mating parts on the chassis brake rigging and keeper plate, respectively.

Here's the footplate unit. You can just about make out the Caprotti drive shaft sloping up towards the saddle area. Also visible, with the circular spiral on the end is the valve actuating pipe running from the dome to the cylinders. In a previous post, I explained the thinking behind fixing the cylinders and slide bars to the footplate, rather than to the chassis, as one might expect.

My friend, David Clarke, who is going to paint and line the body, has advised that he would prefer the boiler and footplate to be supplied as a single unit so I have now fixed them together with Araldite, which is curing as I write. Once set sufficiently, I'll trim off the excess which has squeezed out and fill any remaining gaps.

Dave.