When I was working as a Game Warden in East Africa in Tanzania in the late 60's and early 70's the East African Railways were still 75% steam operated. In Tanzania the back bone of the fleet were 2-8-2 from various manufacturers dating back into the early 50's. They were in need of some new power and they got it in the form of rebuilt Meter Gauge 2-8-2's from India. Now this boiler shell come from a Del Prado static model of an Indian Railways Narrow Gauge YP Pacific. It is the same boiler, cab and tender style as those that came to Tanzania on the YG 2-8-2's.

This is a model of Porter in Nn3 from a kit by Toma Model Works in Japan. I also have 3 cars to go with it 2 from Toma and 1 from FR Freudenreich Feinwerktechnik in Germany.

Toma   http://homepage1.nifty.com/tfw/ws/main-e.html

FR http://www.fr-model.de/index.php?lang=en&what=products&cat=1

This is a free lance mallet for narrow gauge. The chassis is Märklin 88291 0-8-8-0 and we have revised the wheel arrangement to 2-8-8-2. We are using a pewter boiler shell from GHQ/RLW and tender from K27 currently but that will change to a modified tender from K27 making it longer than the K27 original.

After running the Mallet for awhile we noticed that it would occasionally jam up and eventually it started to jam frequently. We got a clue from Glenn and Sandy Stiska of Florida who do a great job dealing with repair work on Marklin Z as they had come across this problem also.

It appears that in the tower of each truck there is one gear that is not fixed in place on an axle. It is positioned between the reduction gear that contacts the worm gear on the motor shaft and the two driver axle gears. With a bit of wear the tolerances open up and this gear can move laterally in the tower causing it to loose contact with one of the axle gears and then the thing jams up. The drawing on the left in the right hand corner in the second row of pictures shows the shaft for this gear that I fabricate, for this tower gear to run on. This keeps the gear in place and no contact is lost with the driver axle gears and so no gear jam ups occur anymore.

Progress in detailing this engine is progressing slowly but here are some updated photos in the left column.

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