The idea of an inertia wagon is not new - indeed some of the vintage steam enthusiasts in O gauge use them to keep their high speed Bowmans and the like down to a reasonable pace. So when I received a very early prototype Slomo by accident (the wrong one got shipped) Terry  agreed that I could experiment with it.

 

The obvious candidate for me was an Accucraft loco as there was no possibility of fitting the Slomo on the loco due to the inside valve gear. I built the tender a few years back (you can read about it here) and it was relatively easy to convert to take the Slomo.

 

I mounted the Slomo using simple brackets fabricated from brass angle. It would have been better to insulate the Slomo from the chassis with rubber to reduce noise transmission and I plan to do that.

 

My tender uses Accucraft wheels and axles so it was necessary to make a split sleeve from K&S tubing to allow the sprocket to fit. The problem was that initial trials showed that Edrig just spun his wheels when trying to move the weighted tender - and the much heavier Wrekin did as well!

 

The solution proposed by Tery was to use a smaller, 18 tooth (instead of 21 tooth) sprocket and this made a huge difference. I was able to reduce the tender weight to about 2kg and the films you see below were with that set up. Possibly a four wheel drive using two more sprockets and a chain would improve the running and I believe that SSP are going to offer an option with one chain driving a sprocket on each axle.

 

As you will see, I deadened the sound-chamber effect with some foam and the noise it makes is not obtrusive. Rubber mounts that I hather will be supplied with the production version will also make a difference.