Just a quick entry, this, because I have to get back to the hair shirt....

I managed to dismantle the Bachmann chassis for 82044 and found, after some cleaning and careful re-assembly of the side rods only, that the problem was in the valve gear. The basic 0-6-0 chassis ran reasonably well with wires directly soldered to the motor and the valve gear and cylinders removed. I found one of the connecting rods quite badly bent and twisted. They are of very hard metal, so it could not have been careless handling on my part.

After that, however, and having had a long, hard look at the way it is all so loose and just wobbles all over the place, I decided that I wasn't going to do any more with it, so it has been discarded in favour of the modified Comet option.

So, I am currently building a Comet 76XXX chassis, with extensions soldered on the back, and have spent most of today doing that for one of the side frames, carefully modifying it so that it fits the Bachmann body.

I'm not quite there with it yet, however, as more major surgery is necessary to the Comet chassis around the cylinder area. I've built the cylinders and slide bar assembly already, because that really has to be in the right relationship to the body before much more is done to get the chassis running.

I had a spare Mashima 1620 round can motor and DJH 50:1 gear box, which I'm using for the project as well.