As mentioned in the previous blog, the next project is to try out a sprung chassis. This is partly due to my objective of achieving optimum running. This is the Comet chassis with their hornblocks and springs that I've had in the kit pile for years. It requires a massive leap of faith that the rods will line up with the wheelbase as there is no means of adjusting this unlike with soldered in hornblocks, such as High Level, that I used on the previous 2 Dean Goods. Despite this, I set the chassis up in my jig as usual and have used the latest dodge of Romford wheels on P4 axles to check things. These wheels are undersize but do the job. So far so good. The rear retainers needed quite a lot of fettling otherwise they were too tight to allow the rear hornblocks to move.
This loco will have "dummy" inside motion as sold by Brassmasters for their Martin Finney kits. The body work will be mainly leftovers from my Martin Finney Dean Goods kit that I acquired with full working inside motion. I cheated with the Comet chassis by soldering a MF EM gauge front spacer to the front which include the means to attach the inside motion. The eagle-eyed will spot that I have included the front compensation beam and rear holes for beams in case I am not satisfied with the springing and need to revert to compensation. Here are the etches you get. The wires lying around are not included.
Here is the front cylinder block and slide bars with bracket to attach to chassis
And made up. There are some rather small detailing parts that have been added to this that I doubt will be visible once it's in the loco
Here's the whole thing completely assembled and in the chassis retained by a 10BA screw.
I've since added the wires for the brake hangers and the chassis is waiting for the paint shop
- 4
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