Capability of certain nilpotent products of cyclic groups

A group is called capable if it is a central factor group. We consider the capability of certain nilpotent products of cyclic groups, and obtain a generalisation of a theorem of Baer for the small class case. The approach may also be used to obtain some recent results on the capability of certain nilpotent groups of class 2. We also obtain a necessary condition for the capability of an arbitrary $p$-group of class $k$, and some further results.