Zach Bond has recently fitted a Summerlands Chuffer (SCGP1) to his Regner Vincent - here are his notes, comments and photos.

 

 

"We all know the Summerland’s chuffer is a great addition to

many steam locos - but Regner geared beasties? I decided to experiment and find

out if the chuffer could successfully be put to use on my Regner Vincent.

 

First comes the painful part - in order to remove the exhaust steam pipe which runs along the Driver’s left hand side of the boiler under the cylinder arrangement (without out totally dismantling the loco  - though this is easily done), one needs to grab a pair of small side cuts (mine came in a box set of small pliers from B and Q for Christmas!) and cut off the exhaust pipe from inside the smoke box as close to the bottom of the chimney as possible. The smoke box front comes off with two bolts on either side.

 

Once this is done the pipe can be removed by undoing the steam nut under the cylinder and carefully moving the pipe until it comes out of the hole in the side of the smoke box.

 

Now you’ve got your pipe separate from the loco you will see that the rough cut from earlier has closed off the top of the pipe. One can rectify this easily by taking your side cuts and with very little pressure turning the pipe in the jaws. If one keeps turning the pipe in the side cuts applying pressure it should cut the pipe through eventually leaving the pipe circular and free of burs. Now test fit your chuffer, you need a general purpose chuffer to fit 1/8th pipes (SCGP1). Now the Germans doing everything in metric have

left us with a bit of a problem, you need to file very little off the steam pipe and the chuffer should then fit really well.

 

Take the chuffer off again and reassemble the exhaust pipe into the shoebox and re-attach on to the cylinder. Test-fit your chuffer onto the exhaust pipe and make adjustments with small pliers if necessary. I found I had to lower the exhaust pipe a little to get the chuffer completely inside the chimney but apart from that nothing else had to be done. Fitting the chuffer down onto the exhaust pipe can be a little fiddly but with small pliers the job is quickly done. With the steam nut under the cylinder done up again and the smoke box front back on a test steam is in order.

 

Now this is a geared loco so a very slow chuff is not possible. Regner locos are geared down 6 to 1 so that’s 12 beats to one revolution of the wheels instead of 4. The result is a nice ‘chunter’ rather than a chuff but still with clear beats when running at sensible speeds. This reflects the characteristics of geared locos and really emphasises the charm of geared locos.

 

Now not many of the Regner range can easily be fitted with chuffers. The Vincent is easy peasy as I found out however to fit a Konrad with a chuffer would require the exhaust pipe to enter the side of the smoke box  rather than the chimney to give the

space - a hole would be required.

 

Lumber jack could be fitted but with two double acting ossys geared 6 to 1 the chuff will become a blurred hiss. (It has been done and the owner is rather pleased with the result! CB). Chaloner and Willi are vertical boilered locomotives and are

thus difficult to fit a chuffer to. One could of course redirect the exhaust

steam under the locomotive in the same way as whistles are sometimes fitted and

mount the chuffer inside a larger diameter tube but then that’s getting a

little complicated! (Now who will be the first? CB)

 

I am really pleased with the loud "chunter" my Regner Vincent makes when pottering round railways and hope that these notes have been of use to someone.

 

I have made a short video of my Vincent “chuntering” to show you exactly the result one will achieve when fitting a chuff pipe to a Regner Vincent.