Dapol Pannier - A haynes manual

[Tim V]

Converted mine for 2mm, turned the wheels down to a better profile.

 

I won't do another one, although it's an exquisite model, it is very fragile, very light (compared with the Farish one) and extremely difficult to put back together.

[2mm Andy]

Having said that, when we get the Farish 64XX I think we will have something where the conversion is going to be easy.

 

Chris

 

Indeed - I've just been drawing up some of the necessary conversion parts for this. Mind you, all a bit hypothetical until the model is released!

 

Andy

[antyeates1983]

2mm Association members might be interested to know that the February/March magazine will include an article by Pete King on converting the Dapol pannier...

 

Best regards,

 

Anthony

[Chris Higgs]

As a postcript, has anyone ever actually replaced a motor on the Dapol Pannier?  I bought one on ebay as a non-runner, stripped it out, and concluded that although the motor would run intermittently, it was basically dead. At this point I tried to unclip it. The photo shows the result. The body survived the birth (just about) but the motor did not. In the loco smokebox are a number of resistors etc which seem to be toally inaccessable.

 

Even with the motor out, I am no clearer if there is suppoed to be a viable way to remove the motor, its mount which sits inside the front of the tanks, or that weight that's behind it. I think they are both glued solid. Given this, even my plan B of fitting it with an etched replacement chassis looks to be doomed.

 

 

So for anyone who buys one of these, if it stops running and it's the motor that's gone, then I think it's basically toast. Get yourselves a new body containing a working motor.

 

Chris

 

P.S. I am more than happy to be told I am a total idiot and there was an easy way to do this.

 

 

Edited November 5, 2016 by Chris Higgs

[queensquare]

I have a dead one that I intend to fit an Association chassis under though Ive not had  time to do anything about it yet. Im confident it will fit though fully expect to have to do a bit of butchery in my normal blacksmith type way to achieve it!

 

jerry

[Chris Higgs]

I have a dead one that I intend to fit an Association chassis under though Ive not had  time to do anything about it yet. Im confident it will fit though fully expect to have to do a bit of butchery in my normal blacksmith type way to achieve it!

 

jerry

 

I suspect you'll be fitting a full new set of handrails then. The knobs on these seem to be tiny plastic mouldings and break fairly easily.

[Kylestrome]

Even with the motor out, I am no clearer if there is suppoed to be a viable way to remove the motor, its mount which sits inside the front of the tanks, or that weight that's behind it. I think they are both glued solid. Given this, even my plan B of fitting it with an etched replacement chassis looks to be doomed.

 

Chris,

 

This is probably too late to help you with your pannier but recently the motor in mine died and, being the inquisitive type, I started to dismantle it. Like you, I got as far as destroying the motor!     But I was determined not to be defeated and realised the motor is clipped into a sub-assembly that is held in place by the weight. The weight is, of course, firmly glued in but I managed to get it out using a small, thin bladed palette knife to break the join. The result you can see in the photo.

 

 

 

I even managed to put the motor back together but, not surprisingly, it runs roughly now. I am hoping that the 2mm Scale Association motor will be suitable as a replacement. Has any one tried this?

 

David

Edited February 3, 2017 by Kylestrome

[Chris Higgs]

Chris,

 

This is probably too late to help you with your pannier but recently the motor in mine died and, being the inquisitive type, I started to dismantle it. Like you, I got as far as destroying the motor!     But I was determined not to be defeated and realised the motor is clipped into a sub-assembly that is held in place by the weight. The weight is, of course, firmly glued in but I managed to get it out using a small, thin bladed palette knife to break the join. The result you can see in the photo.

 

DSC02610.jpg

 

 

I even managed to put the motor back together but, not surprisingly, it runs roughly now. I am hoping that the 2mm Scale Association motor will be suitable as a replacement. Has any one tried this?

 

David

 

Alan Smith has replaced his with the 7mm Farish-like coreless motor, which gave a massive improvement. This also meant the motor could be fixed permanently to the chassis, wth no need to clip it into the body.

 

Perhaps the Nigel Lawton 8mm coreless will also fit.

[D869]

I acquired one of these myself last weekend. It was bought as a sub-standard item and it lives up to that billing, being very jittery when running.

 

Thanks to the various contributors here, I have stripped the thing down. The motor came out without any real fight - partly because I think someone had been there before me (possibly even replacing the motor) and partly because there didn't seem to be much evidence of huge amounts of glue thereabouts anyway.

 

With the rods removed the gear train seems smooth enough but some burrs on the wheel faces seem to have been catching the rods so that will need to be sorted if the original wheels stay. The jittery behaviour remains even with the rods off so the wheel burrs are not the whole problem. Pushing the thing down harder onto a rolling road seems to make the jitters go away so I wonder if it's a vicious circle where the lack of smoothness causes intermittent pickup and the whole jittery thing just builds up.

 

The running reminds me of the way that my 45xx behaved when fitted with the Association can motor. Its running was transformed by a strip down, deburring the brass gears, fitting Simpson springs and fitting a Nigel Lawton 8mm motor. Exactly how much improvement was down to each of those three things individually I'm not sure but I do think that the motor was definitely a problem.

 

I'm not familiar with the '7mm Farish-like coreless motor'... how does one get hold of such a thing?

 

In the meantime I have put an order in for some more Lawton motors because they are very good and will get used one way or another anyway.

 

Regards, Andy

[Chris Higgs]

I'm not familiar with the '7mm Farish-like coreless motor'... how does one get hold of such a thing?

 

They were going on ebay from China for a rudicuously low price. I fear they are all gone now. I bought 16 which I hope is a lifetime's supply.

 

You can buy the actual Farish 7mm coreless motors from the service department at Bachmann.

 

Chris

Edited March 12, 2017 by Chris Higgs

[D869]

An envelope containing some Lawton 8mm motors popped onto my doormat this lunchtime - very speedy service!

 

Size-wise the Lawton motor is perhaps 0.5-1mm longer than the Dapol original (depending which bit you measure) but I think there is enough margin to fit it into the Pannier.

 

The motor will push up inside the tank/boiler moulding just fine - the blanking pieces between the front splasher just springs out very slightly as it goes in.

 

I whipped the worm off the Dapol motor using my GW Models puller plus a 'press tool accessory' from NWSL in the States (the GW Models Puller has a pin that's too big four our needs).

 

I think that Dapol have taper reamed the worm because it was an easy fit onto the Lawton shaft one way around and would not go on the other way around. As luck would have it, a firm push with finger pressure leaves the worm gripping the shaft with maybe 0.5mm to spare between it and the motor nose bearing. I wasn't expecting to get that lucky.

 

So I soldered up the feed wires and made a quick motor mount using engineering grade Blu Tack. It seems to be possible to achieve a reasonably convincing mesh. Then I Blu Tacked the Dapol weight on top and gave her a test run.

 

The result is a vast improvement over the (admittedly suspect) Dapol motor. There is still some hesitation in forward gear that I need to investigate but reverse gear is as smooth as you like.

 

Another win for the Lawton 8mm motor

 

Next I need to figure out a more permanent way to mount the motor to the chassis (ideas anyone?). It will get a 'tug' each time the body moulding is removed so it needs to be able to withstand a small amount of force.

 

Regards, Andy

[Ian Morgan]

I used Milliput in place of Blutack on my Terrier. It held the motor OK, but I had to remove the motor later by prising it off the Milliput, and used superglue when I refitted it.

My first attempt with Milliput ended up with the gear meshing too close. I think the motor had sunk while the Milliput was setting. I put some tissue paper between the gears for the second attempt, and the meshing was good once set, and the paper was removed.

[D869]

I might just stick with the Blu Tack for now (geddit?)... but yes, Milliput might be a longer term answer. I did have a good lock to try to figure out a more engineered form of fixing but there is not much room for such refinements.

 

The Pannier is now smooth in both directions. I didn't do much to it - just found that one of the wires from the chassis to the DCC plug was rubbing on the rear driving wheel. Not 100% sure this was the problem but it wasn't helping.

 

I've managed to squeeze a good deal of lead into the space around the Lawton motor - not far short of the weight of the Dapol ballast lump (which is still in the rear of the boiler/tanks). There is probably room for a bit more lead in the cab too.

 

Pickup is... well... to rigid 0-6-0T standards so although the loco is lovely and smooth when going, it is not yet a reliable shunting machine. There is plenty of slop in the bearings so I might try to rig some Simpson springs if I can find room for them.

 

It still has N gauge wheels. Given the current unavailability of 9.5mm Association wheels I think I might just send mine off to Mr Solloway in the interests of getting this thing to do some useful work in the forseeable future. It does now look like a viable machine so worth the effort fo getting the wheels done.

 

Regards, Andy

[Chris Higgs]

This motor looks interesting:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-12V-8000RPM-RS385-High-speed-Coreless-Motor-for-RC-Aircraft-Helicopter-Toy-/122278859140?hash=item1c78635184:g:1JwAAOSwfVpYuBeC

 

A lot more money than the ones that were on before, but still a good price

 

Chris

[Kylestrome]

This motor looks interesting:

 

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/DC-12V-8000RPM-RS385-High-speed-Coreless-Motor-for-RC-Aircraft-Helicopter-Toy-/122278859140?hash=item1c78635184:g:1JwAAOSwfVpYuBeC

 

A lot more money than the ones that were on before, but still a good price

 

Chris

 

I've just ordered two. It'll be interesting to see if they're any good.

 

How they can afford to send them post free is a mystery to me.

 

David

[richbrummitt]

They cost much less to make and factor in the postage cost. Postage from china/HK is cheaper than postage to there.

[D869]

Remember this topic?

I did a bit more on my Pannier after my previous posting nearly 2 years back. Mr Solloway turned the wheels for me and I did indeed fit Simpson springs in an attempt to improve pickup. On test the thing seemed to be OK at least some of the time so I took it with me to the Helston show and used it as the layout testing loco during setup. Even on freshly cleaned track it couldn't get from one end to the other without being prodded several times so it was put in the box and there it remained until recently.

My 'last chance saloon' plan was to fit some wiper pickups to bear on the rail. A bit desparate maybe but not too much of a time investment if it didn't work.

The springy bits are slaters 2mm wide P/B strip... which is quite thin stuff so I was concerned whether it would have enough rigidity to make proper contact with the rail. Then I had to cut away half of the width to clear the rear driver springs which made it even less rigid. At the back end they are soldered to a thing cobbled together from PCB and brass with a 12BA screw which passes up where the coupling pocket pin thing used to be.

Surprisingly initial tests proved encouraging so I fitted some DGs and decided to give it a real test by using it as the St Ruth yard pilot for a shift at the Southampton show. This is a very unforgiving duty because trains really do arrive and depart to a schedule and they need to be moved into and out of sidings very smartly because the yard is so cramped.

To cut a long story short it successfully did several shifts on both days of the show and ran as smoothly as you like with almost no evidence of stalling - certainly on a par with the usual class 22 that does the job. There were a couple of derailments because side play seems to be lacking so that is something that I need to look at.

A couple of photos - one of the new pickups and one showing it in a more normal orientation.

 

Next step is to do something with the Dapol crankpins and try on some Association coupling rods. I've found that the threads are M1 x 0.25 and am going to have a go at turning down the ends of some screws to make smaller crankpins that will screw into the Dapol threads. We shall see how that goes and then I really need to do domething about those horrible brake rods.

[D869]

Another update on my 57xx...

 

We found when testing the loco on St Ruth a couple of weeks ago that there is a point which has the closure rails gapped quite close to the crossing and the skid pickups were capable of shorting when traversing this point. Hopefully filing a bit away from the pickups will cure this...

 

 

So on to the coupling rods... these are from the Association etch intended for the Farish Pannier (along with rods for the 3F, 08 and 'J' ninety whatever it is). The crankpins started out as M1.0 x 0.25 brass screws (not cheap!). The heads were removed (actually I removed a bit more than this so the offcuts may still be useable as short screws one day). The threads were turned off all except about 2mm of the length to leave about a 0.6mm diameter crankpin... which seems to be roughly the size of the holes in the etch.

 

 

So having made 6 crankpins like this and a little touch of the reamer on a couple of coupling rod holes that were tight I assembled them onto the loco, I wasn't sure what to expect given that the wheels are also geared together and the rods were intended for the Farish model but it was able to move itself at the first attempt. There was some binding but the rods were a lot further out than I intend and were rubbing on the back of the footplate steps. Next I stripped the loco down again, removed the footplate moulding and then re-seated the motor on its Blu Tack cradle. Having added some wire insulation crankpin washers to keep the rods in place the loco ran surprisingly smoothly with no fettling needed at all. Result!

 

The next step (still underway) is to take each wheel off one at a time and file the Dapol crankpin inserts back to a more sensible overhang. At the moment I'm using a piece of 15 thou brass as a filing guide which should still leave a decent length of thread and some clearance to stop the rods rubbing on the wheel bosses...

 

 

That's all for now.

[James Parker]

In case anyone is interested I have just completed my conversion of the Dapol 57xx Pannier to 2FS, largely following the article in the 2mm scale magazine in 2016.  Generally the guide in the magazine worked well but I found that electrical pickup was a real issue. 

After some investigation this was traced to poor electrical contact between the replacement bushes and the chassis.  The bushes were a relatively loose push fit in the chassis and evidently this was insufficient reliably to break through the oxide and or other insulating deposit on the alloy of the chassis.  I tried to repair the situation initially with electrically conductive adhesive, which turned out to be a waste of money and time, and eventually resorted to soldering a wire to each bush thus connecting them electrically and running this direct to the motor pick up from the chassis, thus effectively bypassing the bush/chassis electrical interface.  Its on the top side of the bushes so invisible when the model is on the track.

 

This fixed the problem entirely and the model now runs smoothly, even better (and down to a very slow speed) with 2x470uF tantalums forming a stay-alive.

 

Now I just need to find a way to disguise the tantalums which are visible (currently in their native yellow/orange livery) through the cab side.  Black paint is obviously the first measure, but I'm wondering if I can squeeze in a driver, somewhat cruelly bisected, leaning out of the cab!

[Ian Morgan]

11 minutes ago, James Parker said:

... I'm wondering if I can squeeze in a driver, somewhat cruelly bisected, leaning out of the cab!

 

ModelU do some nice 'leaning out' footplate crew.