An intriguing 5” gauge battery powered 45xx

[darrene]

I came upon an interesting steam outline model recently…

Ingeniously conceived and the body is sturdily built of wood and steel although you’d be hard pressed to tell from the outside.

I will be interested to see how well it will pull an adult passenger - it’s a single motor (Sinclair C5, no less!) powering the middle driver via a chain reduction but it’s reasonably low geared so should have a bit of torque. The motion rods obviously transmit the power to front and rear drivers.

The steam sound is provided by a Peter Spoerer MyLocoSound unit. The chuff is triggered by a nylon cam on the front driver and a reed sensors.

[darrene]

[darrene]

The steam effect is ingenious. The crosshead pump sucks water from a sump at the bottom of the tank, and pushes it (through a filter) into the top of the tank in order to circulate it. When it does that, it's ensuring a constant flow of water into the small reservoir which the ultrasonic fogger sits in when the loco is in motion.

The 12v diaphragm pump adds the height of luxury to ownership - pressing the small red button next to the pump empties the water tank for you at the end of a run.

Positive pressure from the pistons is fed up the blast nozzle and also into the back of the tank in order for the mist from the fogger to be driven towards the chimney and to pulse slightly in order to provide a chuff

I'll try and run it this weekend if I get a chance

[darrene]

First run on a very short piece of track with my daughter taking the role of camerawoman, having had a quick go herself

Other than a small leak from the gland in the crosshead pump which only exhibits itself when the loco is stationary for some strange reason, she performed flawlessly and I was really impressed.


In a strange twist of fate, I realised the actual 5541 is about 10 miles away from me, seeing service at the Dean Forest Railway! A throwaway comment I made in a public forum mentioning how good it would be to get a photo of the two locos together has resulted in a trustee kindly reaching out to offer just such an opportunity. Watch this space!