Wrightlines Sentinel Vertical Boiler Loco
I have a Wrightlines Sentinel inductrial loco kit in my collection and have been thinking how to power it in 14mm gauge. I have a Tramfabriek “All Rounder” chassis which I wondered about using.
The All Rounder chassis is on the right and it looked like the body was going to need quite a lot of surgery to make it fit. Given the loco is quite long, I wondered if I could make my own lower profile version with double reduction gearing. This development is on my SPUD-U-Like page.
The body is cast white metal from masters by Keith Millard. They are beautiful and the parts fit together with very little work. The kit is designed to fit either a Tenshodo SPUD or a Black Beetle drive. I carved the footplate and chassis sideframes quite a lot to fit my own “Double Trouble” SPUD and added an overall footplate “cover” from thin nickel silver sheet to hide everything. The prototype had open frames but that wouldn’t have worked with my chassis, so I have settled for a cover while still retaining the open space beneith the horizontal water tank.
There is a fair bit of detailing to do but there was enough of the body done to try a test run of the chassis.
I can get it down to very slow speeds but it sounds like the motor in grumbling a bit! I hadn’t noticed that with my single stage SPUD bogies.
I shall have to see how it runs on the layout when the body is finished. I won’t have time before my final show of 2026 at Rugby but it should be ready for the next show in 2027 at Bristol.