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 Posted - July 02 2023 : 12:38:41 PM
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A friend of mine picked up a kit for a Shay locomotive at a garage sale. It was a 3-truck shay, partly assembled and with missing parts. He did not figure he could complete it, and passed it on to me.
The third truck is its own car attached behind the part of the model shown above. As designed in the kit, it would never work. It attaches to the main part of the locomotive as a trailer hitches onto a car and can only articulate in one place. Under it is a drive shaft for the third truck, and it has a universal joint under that hitch. What was needed, and what is the case with a real Shay, is a drawbar that pivots both on the main frame of the locomotive and the frame of the water tank above the third truck. That also means the drive shaft would need a universal at both places where the drawbar attaches. I assembled it according to the kit, and of course, the locomotive derailed the first time and every time it went into a curve. A simple trailer hitch is not enough for two axles with flanged wheels.
At this point, I figured the best idea was to turn it into a 2-truck Shay. The frame and the fuel bunker are different on a 2-truck Shay, but I could get those parts from a company I found that sells parts for the MDC Shay: Wiseman Model Services.
https://wisemanmodelservices.com/
I got the locomotive pretty much assembled as a 2-truck Shay:
Some testing revealed that the trucks were badly designed and created a great deal of friction. A little reaming opened up some clearances around the axles and drive shafts and it ran a bit better. The wheels are not driven by the drive shaft between them and the crank shaft. That's just for show. The main drive is a drive shaft under the center of the locomotive that drives worms and gears in the center of the trucks. This means that, either the real drive shaft and the one that's for show must be perfectly synchronized or there will be binding. It's not a perfect world, so most people assembling this model only put enough gears on the "show" drive shaft to make it go around and not enough to mesh with the gears on every wheel. That's what I did, too.
There was one problem that I never did manage to solve. The drive shaft with the worms is too close to the axles and the mesh between worm and worm gear is so tight, it's what bears the weight of the locomotive. This creates unnecessary friction that makes the motor work harder and makes the locomotive wobble down the tracks. I really don't know a good way to tune this problem out of the machine, so I just don't pile on the miles to where the motor overheats. I also just accept the disconcerting sight of a Shay wobbling a bit. In real life, Shays are exceptionally smooth-riding.
I don't necessarily recommend this model to someone who hasn't already got one, but I hate to cavalierly reject a gift, too, so I made the best I could of it.
One other note about the design. The couplers attach to the metal frame which is grounded to one rail. With metal Kadee couplers, you can bump a rail of the opposite polarity going through a switch with the glad hand of the coupler and cause a momentary short that burns up the knuckle spring. I had a few plastic Accu-Mate couplers around and put those on the locomotive.
A few detail parts and some paint made for a model that looks good by the standards of my layout. Here's the "good side" of the Shay:
The left side of a Shay is less scenic, but here it is on my model:
Here's the beast with a couple of loads of logs behind it:
You may have noticed a sudden change in the smoke stack. It came with the big spark-arresting stack of a wood-fired engine, and wood rails around the fuel bunker. Most of my locomotives are coal fired, so I put coal in the fuel bunker and used a capped stack I had left over from another MDC kit.
Carpe Manana!
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 Posted - July 02 2023 : 12:47:07 PM
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Nice job with fixing the engine. Looks great on your layout Don. Thanks for sharing your story and photos with us.
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Posted - July 02 2023 : 9:01:59 PM
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Thanks for posting this. I have one of the Gorre & Daphetid shay kits that i haven't started on yet. It's always nice to know the pitfalls and workarounds before you start in on a rather complex kit.
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Posted - July 02 2023 : 9:31:28 PM
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Wow, your Shay looks incredible! Awesome work as always!
"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father which is in Heaven." - Matthew 5:16
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Posted - July 09 2023 : 03:15:36 AM
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| Astonishing. You made a Shay out of lemons!
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Posted - July 09 2023 : 09:20:45 AM
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quote:Astonishing. You made a Shay out of lemons!
Originally posted by Chops124Â -Â July 09 2023Â :Â 03:15:36 AM
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New and improved, lemon-fresh Shay 
By the way, thanks for the kind words, everyone.
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Posted - July 10 2023 : 7:51:46 PM
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Read the different things you had to diagnose and fix to get it to run at all. Good grief, Charlie Brown!
Melted knuckle springs? Jeesh!!
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Posted - July 12 2023 : 1:23:23 PM
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quote:Read the different things you had to diagnose and fix to get it to run at all. Good grief, Charlie Brown!
Melted knuckle springs? Jeesh!!
Originally posted by Chops124Â -Â July 10 2023Â :Â 7:51:46 PM
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I often ran into the same situation with Athearns. The Kadee couplers conducted electricity, and the Athearns picked up current through the frame. Run the locomotives back to back and the frames are opposite polarities. On the road diesels the coupler covers were plastic which insulated the couplers. But on the switchers, the covers and coupler pads were metal and the only way to run the cow and calf in the proper orientation was to use a plastic drawbar to connect them. You would run into the same problem if you ever tried to replace the fiber drawbar between the locomotive and tender on a Tyco 4-6-2 or 2-8-2 with a metal one.
Edited by - jward on July 15 2023 3:30:17 PM
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Posted - July 13 2023 : 7:14:38 PM
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| Great Scott.
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