Atlas Shay

Has anyone detailed one. Looking for ideas for ours. We converted ours to a wood burner. Added a diamond stack, tool box, brass number board and mu hoses. Thinking of cutting out the all weather cab to an open one. What else before we weather it??? Pictures would be wonderful.
Thanks

 

Here is ours:

 

Converted mine to a coal burner, cut the cab to an open cab. Not all that easy, but worth it. Remember, this is a 65-ton, Pacific Coast shay, relatively modern. You have to go to shaylocomotives.com and do some studying to figure out similar models of the era. This is a stretch by any means.

The Atlas one does go to a specific prototype, but it really wasn't a common model. For a two-truck shay it was a big one. So if you're trying to backdate it, keep one eye closed at all times.

The biggest thing that really jumps out at you is repainting it with Grimy Black. The detail pops a lot more, and then I give it a light wash of grimy black again to tone down the lettering and streak it a bit. Most logging railroads weren't really all that rusty until post-depression, but they sure were never spit and polish, either.



W&D 6 was actually a 42-ton class shay, far smaller, but it's hard to argue with how well the Atlas Shay actually runs.

 

I scratchbuilt this several years before the Atlas shay came out, it's on a Kato 11-105 chassis with a gearhead motor. Although I tried mightily, I couldn't figure out a way to get the crank to spin, although I made it moveable. This is a 28-tonner, far more typical, and it's prototype (W&D #2) was a woodburner.

 

Hi. I have seen your work. Really nice. The first thing I did after joining this group was go through all the old posts. This is what gave me the idea.

 

We are not really trying for a prototypical loco as much as we want it to look appropriate with our rolling stock. We would like it to have the same "feel".

 

I really recommend shaylocomotives.com, as you can search by railroad or builder number. The photos are priceless, particularly for detailing. I'm honored to even have the only shot of W&D 6 they could find in my personal collection. If you need ideas for weathering, junk, equipment shots, etc. that's the go-to place for Shays.
https://www.shaylocomotives.com/data/searchdataframe.htm

Here's mine: Shop #2405
Atlas (or darn close to it) #3300

 

I scrolled on through the 2-truck, 60-tonner class and found this gem... possibly the biggest wood-burning B ever built.

Shop # 3145 (Louisiana)

I think you need a bigger stack!!!!

And honestly, if a modeler did this, they'd get harassed: it's a coal burner, but look at #2962. That looks absurd. It looks like an HO stack on an N shay, coal burner.

 

I was just looking at a stack that size and shape. I have asked if its n scale or not. waiting for a reply

 

Hey, until I saw those photos, I would have been one of the ones harassing you if you put a stack on an Atlas Shay that big....

I make a cast-metal stack for a Radley-Hunter style, also a cast metal copy of the Bachmann 4-4-0 stack. Here's the Radley-Hunter I came up with


I think I have at least one of every stack out there, and if there's a bigger woodburner that looks like that in N, I haven't seen it. I'd look in the HOn3 stuff myself.

 

Thats close to the one I am looking at

 

I turned the original in aluminum rod and make metal castings of it, PM or email me on the address on the randgust.com website if you decide that works for you. $5 plus postage. That's one of the classic situations I ran into that simply nothing out there was the right stack, and my prototype just loved the darn things. That Radley-Hunter style apparently fit right over top of a regular shotgun stack and collected cinders, so the same stack kept showing up at various times on three different locomotives they owned. In the winter you'd see a shotgun stack and in the dry season the same locomotive would have a Radley Hunter on it.