dibber25

E-mails about the Sentinel are on a special Project Sentinel mailbox and go direct to Ben. If you post them on here, I'll have to take the details and pass them on to Ben as he doesn't read rmweb very often. I'd prefer it if you e-mail him direct and save me a job. CHRIS LEIGH

Belt drive is being considered purely from the aesthetic viewpoint as it would look good driven in a similar way to the real thing. Chains that small would be impractical. I can't now remember which CAD views were used in the magazine, but if there's an underside view, it may well show the first idea for belt drive. This had one axle driven off each end of the motor and would have resulted in the axles rotating in opposite directions. That's what model development is all about! Belt drive is one aspect which is being considered. If it doesn't work, it won't be used. CHRIS LEIGH

We are looking at body variations such as grilles etc to see if they can be incorporated in the tooling. CHRIS LEIGH

Will this be a subscriber (to Model Rail) only offer ? No, absolutely not. This is a commercial enterprise and we want to sell as many as possible. We need to reach a certain figure just to recoup the tooling costs, so no restrictions, and if anyone wants a commercial deal for a batch in a particular livery as limited editions, we'll consider that, too. CHRIS LEIGH

And how much will it pull? So many questions! We won't know how much it will pull until we test the engineering sample. At present we are as far as the CAD drawings illustrated in the magazine. There's a lot of development work to be done and it isn't even started. We'll be looking at possible belt drive and whether we have a CDU-type installation to smooth the current supply to the motor over things such as dead frog points. We're entirely in uncharted waters. As I said earlier, no magazine has embarked on a project like this before. We will keep readers up to date with progress through the magazine but, at the moment, if the question is not answered in the current issue, we either don't know the answer or aren't willing to provide an answer at this time. CHRIS LEIGH

I have doubts about clearances as there's a huge amount to get into a very small space. This could well be the first powered OO item from Dapol and will therefore need a lot of proving tests etc. Frankly, we'll be happy if it looks good and runs well in OO. If there happens to be enough room to get broader gauges in, that'll be a bonus. The primary objective is to have a good little OO loco that pleases customers and gives us a reasonable return on a very big investment. For that reason, unpainted examples and part-assembled examples won't happen - because there's no margin to be had on such things. CHRIS LEIGH

When? A year's time + an allowance for over-run. How much? We do have a price but it's much too early to make it public. Will it have clearance for P4? No idea at present - the spec is given in the magazine but that doesn't mean it won't change if we find that it has to. CHRIS LEIGH

Chris, will similar projects be considered if this is successful? Let's not run before we can walk, but if it sells like hot cakes, well, we'd be silly not to follow it up, wouldn't we? Discussions in the office have already identified several possibilities and I'm trying to press the case for a ....!! No, better not say. CHRIS LEIGH

The S&D Sentinels were somewhat different in shape from our model, but remember, it's YOUR layout, if you want to run a Sentinel, you don't need to make an excuse to do so! CHRIS LEIGH