Dave Holt

Like the Class 40 - my favorite diesel locos. I've got one of the latest 6 axle drive Bachmann examples (in plain green) to convert using Penbits sprung bogies. Might be the next project after your 4F chassis! Dave.

Robin, All very neat and simple looking, as per the previous boards. Is that a splendidly isolated turntable pit in the corner? Dave.

Peter. The loco looks magnificent. Congratulations. I do find many of these 7 mm builds very inspiring but feel slightly envious of the detail included in some of the kits and the high quality replacement detailed parts you have available. Mind you, I suppose in the larger scale, you do need that level of detail, such as bolts in the pipe flanges, to avoid the model looking too plain. I'll just have to stick with my not-so-detailed 4 mm stuff, as I'm heavily committed to it and don't have the space for a 7 mm layout. Keep up the good work! Dave.

Marginally more likely to have been seen at Greenfield rather than Carrog......? Only joking. Was the prototype photo taken at London Road? Dave.

Thanks, gents. I think I was a bit lucky as it turned out I hadn't done a particularly good job of soldering the original side on ! Dave.

John, The Grampus does look very nice. The Rumney chassis certainly adds to the model with the fine detail and, I'm sure, excellent running properties. I've got a couple if Justin's 16 ton mineral wagon chassis to do as (for me) trial builds. I'm impressed with your van collection. I take it that's the result of quite a few years efforts? Do they have a variety of suspension systems (compensated vs sprung, etc.) and if so, do you have a preferred system for future use? Dave.

The replacement side has now been affixed to the tender using Araldite Rapid. I'm pleased to say that the new side is completely flat, with no visible ripples or indentations. In fact, it's better than the other side, so should paint up nicely. Phew! That was all a lot easier and quicker to put right than I had feared. The new side is shown below: side on, and at an angle, hopefully showing the side completely flat. Dave.

A problem has been identified with the right hand side of the tender for my Caprotti Black 5. The whole kit is a Comet product and the tender sides for this part welded type are very thin and rather flimsy, due to being half etched to provide the rivet pattern. During assembly of the second (RH) side, I pressed a bit too firmly to hold it against the internal structure for soldering. The result was a rippled effect where the lines of the framework showed through. Considerable time was spent trying to rectify this by "panel beating",so to speak, and the result didn't look too bad in raw metal. I thought I could live with the remaining marks, especially as the loco is to be heavily weathered. However, once the tender was painted with a gloss finish (to help seat the lining transfers), it looked absolutely awful. . It was obviously pointless proceeding with full painting and lining, as no amount of weathering could possibly hide that amount of damage. So, David Clarke has stripped the paint from that side and returned the tender to me for rectification. To be honest, once stripped back to bare brass, it didn't look nearly so bad but a replacement side is to be fitted anyway. I'm not sure if Comet can supply replacement sides, but I bought a whole tender body kit as the easiest option. The original intention was to trim away the damaged side close to the bulkheads, fire iron tunnel and front piece and then file off any remaining raised rivet or beading detail. However, on closer inspection and the discovery that the side was not well attached is certain areas, I change tack and decided to try and remove the existing, damaged side entirely. This proved not too difficult although it got quite hot whilst unsoldering some of the joints and asbestos fingers would have been an advantage. Once the side was off, the underlying structure was filed flat and any remaining bobbles of solder removed. Here is the resulting tender body with the now totally destroyed side lying in front. Since the photo was taken this lunch time, I've prepared the new replacement side and fixed the two hand rails, ready for reattachment. The new side will be glued to the body, possibly with a few solder tacks for added security of attachment. Hopefully, I'll get this done later in the week so it can go back for painting sooner rather than later. Oh well........ Dave. .

Hi Peter. I think you'll find that these are plugs which allow visual access for valve setting, not washing out. All Stanier locos have them (and many others too), but the openings in the cylinder wrapper are normally covered by easily removable plates. Dave.

Thanks, John. The weathering is based on, but not an exact copy of, a photo of the loco at Newton Heath shed (home base) probably taken in the mid to late 1950's (it later had a Stanier 4000 gallon tender, which limits the date). Just my period. Dave.

The LMS pipe & rod drawing shows them horizontally aligned, as per the photo above. Photos of various locos are a bit less conclusive. Whilst most locos show them side-by-side, I have found photos of 46247 (1963) and 46256 (1962) clearly showing them one above the other. 6228 (circa 1947) has a nice compromise by having them horizontal under the cylinders and then twisting into the vertical or, perhaps, 45 degrees at the end, where they turn downwards. Dave.

My Jubilee, 45701, Conqueror, has now been weathered by friend, David Clarke, ready for me to finish off. Cab glazing, crew and DCC chip to be fitted, the tender coaled up and the cab roof fixed. For some reason I haven't yet identified, it has developed an intermittent short when running forward which it didn't have previously. A quick check of loco brakes and sand pipes hasn't shown anything out of place, so some further investigation will be necessary. Here she is in her current state: Dave.

Robin, Yes, very neat indeed. I tried to keep my wiring on Delph as tidy as possible, but yours takes the biscuit. Looks like you're going to get through a hell of a lot of point motors by the time you've finished. Dave.

Further to my last posting, the motor has now been fitted and the DZ126 chip fitted and all wired up. Pleasingly, the loco ran the correct way, so there was no need to change CV29. After changing the chip address to 4741 (loco number 44741) I've set the acceleration to 20 (out of 31) and deceleration to 3 (out of 31). This enables a fairly smooth acceleration whilst retaining good control over slowing and stopping. Experience has shown that excessive deceleration values makes fine control on a dead-end layout rather hazardous! In the photo, the chip is attached to the rear of the motor body by a thin layer of Bluetac(?) and the wires well tucked in to fit withing the loco firebox. The tin of paint balanced on the front of the chassis is simply ballast to compress the light springs within the front bogie, to avoid short circuits via the brake blocks. Normally, this function is performed by the loco body. Dave.

The chassis for my Caprotti Black 5 has now been painted and re-assembled, apart from fitting the motor and DCC chip. The latter will be a Digitrax DZ126, a tiny, fully encapsulated item, which will be held to the motor with some Bluetack. A couple of similar looking shots of the painted chassis are shown below: Close examination reveals one of the twin rear equalising beams and the single front one extending from the front coupled axle to the centre of the front bogie. The gearbox is an extended High Level driving the centre axle and prevented from rotating round the axle by the loose anchor point behind the rear axle. Various pipes can be seen between the frames, which match up with continuations either under the chassis or under the boiler/footplate unit. The cetre crank pin retainer on the side seen has not been painted as the lubricator drive return crank screws on, outboard of it. The body/footplate unit and tender body are off the be painted and lined next week, so it's all coming along quite well. Dave.

I had the same issue in the goods yard of my layout. I resorted to the laborious task of hand scribing, but in my case I used mounting card rather than clay, as it avoided the mess of clay dust. It worked quite well, although I've been a bit heavy handed with the painting, which has reduced the depth of the embossed lines. These were done using a blunt scriber, being careful not to tear the card surface. I've posted some photos in the past on my "Delph" blog on here. Dave.

Hi Coach. I'm sure these trees are just for test purposes to get a feel for the scene. They do rather resemble flue brushes, if you don't mind me saying so? Dave.

I recently had a near disaster with the Caprotti Black 5 when I accidentally knocked off and nearly lost part of the rather delicate lubricator drive mechanism at my local club meeting. Fortunately, a colleague spotted the missing parts under a table - I was convinced it had come off at home whilst packing the body up, otherwise quite a bit of extra work would have been necessary. Anyway, it turned out not to be as hard to put right as I had feared and, indeed, the repaired drive is both stronger and actually more realistic than before, as I have added an internal stiffening rib missing from my original effort. Silver linings and all that. Buoyed up by the success with the lubricator drive repair, the chassis has been completely disassembled and given a coat of Precision Paints single pack grey etch primer. The instructions stress the need to be sparing with it, but the paint in the (brand new) tin has the consistency of syrup, so constant dipping of the brush in thinners was necessary to get a thin coating. Here are all the bits, except the motor and screws, laid out after priming. Mating surfaces and parts invisible on the finished loco have been left unpainted. Dave.

Yes, the "chug" sound seemed to be very good to me with, as you say, a good bass. Too many steam loco sound chips/systems have a thin, rasping sound, more suited to Bulleid pacifics than Western or LMS locos. One thing that didn't sound right to me was the safety valve sound. LMS locos usually had Ross Pop valves which went off very suddenly with no gentle build up, whereas the demo seemed to build up from a gentle hiss, rather like a GWR loco. Must say, the latest (just current?) version of Carrog is looking really good. Dave.

I can't see any particular problem with making the rocker horizontal, but the slope on the real thing may explain why the pivot mounting appears a bit low compared with the outside valve spindle, as commented by someone earlier in the thread. Dave.

Good luck with your Caprotti 5 kit. I have one almost complete (in P4). I mounted the Mashima motor almost vertically in the firebox, driving the centre axle via an extended High Level gearbox. It fits nicely and is completely invisible in the assembled model, but one does have to position the motor carefully to make sure the top end doesn't bear against the inside of the firebox casting. I agree with the comment above about the Comet top feed casting and replaced mine with one out of my spare casting collection. It might be from a Brassmasters Stanier 5, but I can't be sure about that. I hope you don't mind me posting a couple of photos illustrating these points. Showing the main component assemblies, including the motor/gearbox position. The assembled loco with the replacement top feed casting. Dave.

David, thanks for the complement. I'm sure there are other equally or better detailed locos than this, really. However, it is now slightly more detailed than when you saw it on Saturday. When I separated the chassis, footplate and boiler, I saw that I'd omitted the front part of one of the pipes that run between the frames (actually on the footplate unit), so I've added it now. The boiler is permanently fixed now and I've just trimmed off the excess adhesive squeezed out of the joint round the back and bottom of the firebox. So it's ready to go now! Dave.

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.

It might just be the angle of the photo, but to me, the loco looks to be high at the back or low at the front. Dave.

The rocker arms were not horizontal, sloping down from outside to inside, as shown on this drawing extract. Dave.