DAPOL 4S-041-006 class 5101 Large Prairie no.4134 (BR). Sound by Mr Soundguy.
Built to diagram A9 in 1939 by Charles Collett for the Great Western Railway as part of Lot 323 with 5’8” driving wheels, 3’ 2” leading wheels and 3’ 8” trailing wheels. Length of the engine was 41’ 0” with a weight of 79.1 tons.
This is my own early British Railways version of Dapol’s Large Prairie tank loco. Again, like the Great Western item featured in part 1 of this video, it is a delight to behold and runs as smoothly as silk. That is - until it stalls on some (not all), just a few, points. Dead as a Dodo. Always with the front driving wheels over the ‘dead’ frog of the point. OK, but it has 6 wheel pick-up - so why don’t the other 4 driving wheels keep it going? I tested wheel continuity with a meter - fine. So this can mean only two things (1) the rear 4 wheels are not making contact with the track or (2) both sets
of rear wheels are being moved laterally to the stage where the pick-up contacts are parting company with the backs of the wheels simultaneously on one side only. I placed a thin piece of paper on a straight piece of track and ran the loco over it - in both directions the engine only stopped when the front 2 wheels ran over the paper - 2 wheel pickup! The rear 4 driving wheels were being lifted clear of the track by the trailing wheels. Remedy: (1) remove trailing wheel keeper plate, take out wheels and springs. Place engine back on track and drive. Success! No more stalling. (2) remove the chassis from the body - see instructions. This will enable you to remove the remainder of the trailing wheel assembly. On my model, the top of this moulding was not flat and had a nodule of 1mm at rear end. Keith smoothed this off until the entire top was flat using fine emery cloth. The engine was then re-assembled. The wheels were put back in without the springs and was tried on the track. Success again! Trailing wheels keeper plate re-fitted. Job done. It’s now the beautiful locomotive it should have been in the first place. Many thanks to Derails for supplying it, and offering to replace it.
DCC equipment: Zimo MX658n18 next 18 decoder; sugar cube speaker 15x11x4mm
3 дек 2021
