The Dispatch foundry had the unenviable reputation of producing very poor lokeys. The design, as such, had a winch driven via two steam cylinders, however the steam cylinders also powered the lokey via 24 sets of gears...

See Picture 1.

This picture is again from Mr John Garners site

Some are born great, some have greatness thrust upon them -but all this lokey ever did was GRATE!!! I got used to giving it a prod with a finger to persuade it to actually pull something -normally down hill... After having stalled with one wagon on the level -something inside me snapped. I was going to get something out of all this thing to work even if it meant recycling everything to the shredder. The answer was provided by family in Napier. A company who owned one of these lokeys decided that something had to be done, (I wonder why???). Their solution was to rip out all the gear train and simplify things by turning it into a simple articulated i.e two steam bogies fed live steam with no compounding. The work was long, expensive and fruitless... The hybrid developed a stuck steam safety valve on it's first fire up and blew itself to pieces. Now it could be me, but this was now a greatly desirable thing to do and build. I had on hand the partially built bogies from the newly rebuilt Meyer and I stuck the Dispatch body on them. It looked totally right. What had been a flimsy looking front now took on a chunky very purposeful look. A quick e-mail to my friendly sheet stockholders got me some more brass sheet.

Before:

After:

The first incarnation used the Cambrian models chassis for their de Winton model. I think the problem was that I could not replace (easily) the small can motor for the more robust SME one -as I do in the IP ENG budget chassis.

The gear train etc is the same as that of the Meyer. And Wonder of  Wonders -it actually pulls things -even up hill!!! I am now far more satisfied with the hybrid and I seem to have a worthwhile lokey in my stable -rather than an shelf piece...