After the disaster of a few weeks ago with the "Dukedog" chassis and motor failure another attempt was made on getting a working chassis.
I had to wait until the Warley National model railway exhibition (where I was assisting a fellow CHMRC member with his layout operations) to purchase the necessary parts from Comet Models.
I chose to use their GB5 gearbox and Mashima 10 series motor, (Shown below)
Assembly is straight forward, The bearings are soldered in place and the gearbox is folded up and checked for alignment before soldering the fold joints to strengthen up the gearbox. The Comet GB5 is a double reduction type ideal for this job because it allows the motor to be clear of the frames.Anyway, to cut a long story short, the gearbox, motor and front axle were assembled in about 20mins and put on test.
within a few seconds of starting the motor/gerbox was running as sweet as a nut! so quiet in fact that you had to look to see it running! on the test controller results were very pleasing, the motor current was minimal and slow running was reasonable. I am confident that once run in the combination will work well.
I spent the next day assembling the rest of the chassis, fitting Markits outside cranks and making my own connecting rods as the model I am building 9021 had fluted rods not plain as supplied by K's kits.
The chassis was fitted to the locomotive along with the front bogie and tender. The electrical pick up is just from the tender front and rear axles at the moment until I can get some more phosphor bronze strip.
It was now crunch time! would it run or not? I must admit I was a bit apprehensive about this, When I got the motor I was surprised how small it was Would it pull the weight of the whitemetal body let alone any train
Not having a working layout at home at the moment the only way I could find out was to take it to the CHMRC club rooms and try it on our test track.
Well, the bottom line is IT RUNS! I was really surprised how smooth the chassis is, despite the sparse pick ups and state of the track it ran remarkably well. After a few circuits of the test track it was back in it's box for there is still a lot of detail to be added before it goes to the paint shop.
More on the final assembly and finishing soon!
Cheers!...... Frank
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