The drive line and engine is done! During the week after work, I spent about an hour to two hours each day playing with the drive line and engine. A lot of this was just taking off plastic flashing and making sure everything worked as flawlessly as I could, with nothing catching. Well, actually, the first thing I had to do was to replace one of the gears on the rear drive shaft. See, the Handbook suggests slicing off tiny bits off the front of the gear teeth to help in the gears meshing correctly. And well, I shaved off the wrong side of the gear, ooops. Lucky, the kit had three extra gears. After that it was just a case of fitting everything and then slowly getting everything lined up properly. The first spacing is the gears, universals and spacers on the drive shafts for proper meshing at the wheels. Lucky the Handbook provides some handing starting off measurements. These help but still needed to get the proper spacing so that the gear on the drive shafts would not jump the wheel gear teeth. The engine itself is just tedious deflashing and sanding the plastic of any nubs. I went down to 3000 grit sanded wet to make sure everything was slick. Then it was a case of making sure the square profile tubes were the correct distance. At first the thing would decouple when the truck turned too much, but after some adjustments, that got corrected. Honestly though it was easier to time the front and rear trucks together than I thought. A bit of a twist on a universal and that's all that's needed to line everything up. I just realized that in the bottom picture we can see another Handbook hint, I added two 0.05mm thrust washers to each wheel axle on the gear side. This reduces the side to side play of the axle and makes sure the gear meshes correctly with the drive shaft at all times. And now for some video! First is just a slow meander down the track going forward. I think I lost a tiny bit of the slow speed performance, but still really good. In the video it is not going as slow as I could really make it. Should be even better once all the weight is on the Shay and everything is oiled and greased up (by the way, the cab and boiler are not ready, I just took them from the box and added them on for weight and looks) Second video is in reverse, going a bit faster. Whew, it's loud! Though honestly I think it sounds worse in the cellphone's microphone than hearing it in person. None of that high pitched sound really exists and is likely an artefact of the cheap mic. Now I'm really getting excited, the difficult bits are done, and it's running smooth enough for me. I mean I've seen Youtube videos of other Shay that sound and run much worse than this. Now it's time to add wires to the trucks, and then comes the time to start detailing this thing! yay!
Wow! Congratulations! The slow crawl performance is fantastic. Amazing how much work is needed to get such a kit moving. I am humbled by your patience and perseverance.
Thanks all, but don't be fooled by how slow I work! I'm not putting 4-6 hour days on this The work really has already been done for me by the Handbook, it's got all the hints and tricks to getting it running smoothly. That and taking the time to clean up all flash and nubs. I saw a youngster on YouTube, he just opened the box and started assembling the kit right off, no clean up at all. There's no way it would run even close to smooth that way. Honestly, this is child's play compared to that brass tender and Berkshire build in the n scale section! That I'm in awe of his workmanship and patience.
This is what I've been working on this weekend.... Well, not that! that's the sad excuse for a firebox that's provided with the Shay kit. It's basically just a billboard that sorta kinda hides the gearbox and the back of the engine. The Handbook goes on about a white metal replacement firebox that's supposedly available as a replacement, but here the thing - it's no longer available, and any old new stock can't be found, and I suspect has not been available for a couple decades. So I went and made my own! This is iteration #2 of the firebox, the first being far less detailed and really only existing to test that the dimensions I used for test-fitting the box underneath the frame (yeah, it did not fit, but was close!) 3D printing is amazing, I love it, heh! So how does this one fit? Well, better, but there will be iteration #3. I've never seen that white metal casting of the firebox, but I do know that it used the screws for the engine and the gearbox, sandwiching those items between the frame and the firebox to attach the fire box to the frame. I did the same thing, but only using the engine screws. The gearbox itself stays bolted directly to the frame - this way the firebox is only attached from one side of the frame, but it seems more than secure enough. I also molded in the queensposts (a new term I learned!) right onto the side of the firebox, and various bolt heads. The third iteration is coming to better centre the access ports for the electrical pickup wires and the driveshafts. They are just slightly off and I think I can do better. As for prototype, well, I kinda just invented a lot of this, but based myself a lot on this picture... Credit: Stout Lumber Company Shay, from the Shay Modelers Handbook Series "Class B Shay Model" by Single Shot Gallery - 1983 Here's the thing, I now have three different books with Shays in them, and two of these books from the series Shay Modelers Handbook, "Class B Shay Model" and "Class C Shay Model" have dozens upon dozens of different Shay pictures. I swear, not a single one has the same firebox! However, this picture of a two-truck Shay is a wood burning type and that's what I want to model, so I used it as a guide. The bottom of the firebox seems to flare out, but only on one side (the front). I happen to make it flare out also on the rear, but that's because I've seen other Shay pictures where they flare out on both sides. As for bolt pattern? I dunno, I just went with whatever looked good to me - again pictures are never good enough to really figure out what it should be like. Also, I am kinda trying to model two Shays that existed in Fossmill in Ontario, though I am taking some liberties. Umm, call it "Protolancing" if you must hehe. They had two wood burning Shays, one a two truck, the other a three truck. The book I have called the Fossmill story has a few pictures of the Shays, but none are really good enough to see the firebox. As for the modelling the Fossmill Shays, the reason I will making changes is simply because the owners at Fossmill appeared to be the cheapest outfit you could imagine. The three truck Shay had NO head lamps (either front or rear!), had no air pumps, no air tanks, and the one picture of the left side I have shows no steam jamb on the side of the firbeox. LOL, they bought the basic package and that was it. Heck, even the smoke stack is a narrow thing, not a big diamond stack like most wood burners. But, well, I like head lamps, I like the look of the air pumps, air tank and the steam jamb, so while I will be numbering them #51 and #54 (with no other markings, the Fossmill Shays had NO lettering on the side), I will be adding the details because I just find them neat. So yeah, I'm not really modelling the Fossmill Shays, but I am, if that makes sense. Now off to make edits for iteration #3. I'm also thinking whether I model in the steam jamb directly onto the side of the firebox instead of using the kit steam jamb - might be easier to model it in.
By the way, there's a neat video of the Fossmill logging company on Youtube... That video and the Fossmill Story book bascially got me hooked on Shays (as an aside, I just noticed that in the video, the Shay does in fact have an air tank on it's side, it must have been added later than the pictures I have in the book - still no headlights though)
That's a great job on the firebox! Yeah, the printer takes a lot of the sting out of a dwindling parts supply... CAD is a hurdle, but when one realizes that most modeling parts are just stacks of cubes, cylinders, cones, etc., that barrier goes away.
Wow. I have seen and heard some really jerky grinders. Yours is exceptionally smooth and actually very quiet. Nice work!
Thanks! Well, I went further than I really thought I might with this steam jamb and the firebox This is the third iteration with the final fixes for fit, and as promised, a modelled a dinky little steam jamb loosely based on the picture I posted earlier. Instead of trying to make some rods and pipes that would immediately break soon as I looked at them, I tried something different. For the rod, I just modeled a hole right through the cylinder, and then I added holes underneath. I think the piping underneath are the steam pipes that allow the umm, jamb? not sure what it's really called, to apply pressure and extend or contract the rods that apply the brakes. I wasn't sure I'd even be able to do that piping underneath, but I figured I'd give it a try. I used 0.015" phosphor bronze rods, cut them to size and soldered them together. There may or may not have been cursing involved! Afterwards, CA'd the piping to the holes in the cylinder, and painted the whole thing flat black (Rustoleum camo spray paint) to protect the resin from further UV damage... I'm happy with this! I'm not sure I'll connect the brake rods to anything, but if I don't, I'll just trim them down a bit so they don't catch on everything and anything. Now I'm leaving it alone for 24-48 hours so the paint cures real hard and will fit it in place. I think I'll work on the pilots or something in the meantime.
Sorry for the lack of updates, the last week and the upcoming one are hectic with work, daughter's swimming competitions, and an upcoming surgery at the end of this week for me. Means that updates are going to be far fewer in quantity for next few weeks (if at all)! Okay, so the last thing I did was the firebox, and well, I didn't get much further, just a few little things. I started detailing the pilots, but that proved to be a bit of a problem, well, one that time and money solved The kit comes with a bunch of white metal 3mm stanchions, and honestly, they rather suck. Most are not round, and there's flash, and the prospect of trying to clean up such tiny bits wasn't appealing. So a few weeks back I ordered a set of Precision Scale Model stanchions in 3mm, and those look great! But, I felt they were too long for the cut lever on the pilots. So I ordered some 2mm stanchions. Those are the ones seen in the above picture, got in the mail on Friday. The wire itself it 0.020 phosphor bronze from Tichy. The ones on the top of the pilot are 0.025. Not really following prototype pictures. Well, sorta, like I mentioned before, I just look at the dozens of pictures of Shays in my modelling books and go with things I like best. I also installed the couplers. Turns out I ended up using #148 whisker type Kadees, but with the coupler cover supplied with the kit. Seems to work well enough and is the right height. The pilots aren't glued to the frame yet, but will do later today. And this also showcases my new addition! A new test track! Working on my N scale shays, I know the critical part of testing a Shay is curves, both inside and outside curves - where the mechanism can bind the most as when the drive shafts are no longer setup straight. So I bought a 12" by 60" shelf, and hot glued a few pieces of HO track - straight piece, 18" radius piece, 18", straight, 18", 18", straight. A mix of old brass straight pieces given by a friend, and some new Atlas 18" pieces I bought last weekend. I figure if this navigates 18" radiuses, it'll be fine. And bonus.... I've been accused in the past of having too clean a workbench, so there, proof I can get outright messy! And finally, one last picture for this weekend, here's the mounted firebox on the Shay. Turns out I had to strip the paint. dunno what happened, but the black Rustoleum I used was still tacky and kept staining my fingers three days after applying it. Not quite sure why. I wonder if it's because I cleaned the part with vinegar before painting? Anyways, I'll repaint it later wwith everything else. I need to figure out if I use a primer for the metal and plastic parts, and how I'll do it all. but that's for a much much later date. Oh, and yes, I do have a bit of HO rolling stock. I don't have an HO layout and barely any track. A few years ago I bought a Canadian Pacific 2-8-0 from Broadway Limited (with smoke! ) just to run on a friend's layout. I have a handful of rolling stock (all Athearn blue box stuff I kept buying at 5-10$ from the old stuff table at the Hobby Junction shop here in Montreal (now sadly closed). All my N scale stuff in Canadian National, and at the time, I figured I'd buy CPR stuff for HO just to be different. Sadly that won't quite work for Fossmill, since they were on the CNR line. We'll just have to imagine it was CPR instead
Oh, do I have an update! I've been doing quite a bit of working on the Shay, but failing at updating this thread! Well, about six weeks ago I came out of surgery (went well) and didn't touch the Shay for a good few weeks, and afterwards, well, it's been on and off. one week I spent every evening on the Shay, and the following week, my daughter and I spent the evenings watching Doctor Who episodes! But still, there was a lot of progress, and someone finally poked me enough to get updating this thread Where were we? right, the drive is pretty much done, but not wired. The thing is, if I wire everything up, the trucks will be wired to the frame, and the boiler will be wired to the bunker, causing me all sorts of headaches for when I get to painting. So I decided to put aside all that and get on with detailing in preparation for priming and painting. So first things first, I cleaned up the boiler! Lots of flash had to be removed, and I removed the original whistle and pop valve from the steam dome. I didn't like how they looked, and have since bought some replacement brass parts. What follows is a bunch of shots showing how it looks cleaned up. I'm not entirely sure if the smoke stack and base are glued on yet (it's been a few weeks). I'd guess the base is glued down, but not the stack itself. Weird, that stack didn't have a hole on top But I drilled it out and got it looking better. Take note that in a lot of the pictures the plastic parts are not cleaned up and still have sanding residue on them. I can't remember if I mentioned this, but the parts got knocked around in the box, and I had to sand out a lot of scratches and gouges. I did my best with that, but it's not perfect. Yeah, more on that awful rear sandbox coming up Okay, so the kit is not meant to have a working headlight or rear light. The kit comes with some arc lamp models, and some electric lamp models, and in either case, the kit builder is supposed to use some gaudy little clear plastic jewels to simulate the glass. I don't get it, it looks like a little faceted diamond, and nothing like the glass fronts of these lamps So yeah, not for me. At first I was going to go with some plastic Precision Scale Model Arc Lamps, and I even bought them. They're sitting upstairs in a box, and will not be used. Why? turns out I learned that if you have Arc Lamps, you don't have a steam generator. And I like the generator Right, so to make sure I can get power to the forward light, I drilled a hole from the top of the boiler to the bottom (that was a puckering experience! Only one attempt allowed!), then I dremeled a channel down the bottom. I can't claim to have thought it up, the Handbook mentions this very idea. Now, I would think that the next photos in the series I took over the last few weeks would show you all how I did the headlight? Apparently I seemed to have decided to let things de-pucker and worked on other bits instead. Might be easier to follow the flow of photos, so headlights will be later.. next post coming in a few minutes...
The next bit I worked on turned out to be the truss rods. The kit does come with some 0.02" wire, but I decided to use 0.025" piano wire instead. Based on photos and not measuring anything at all, it just seemed to be better to my eye. Plus the piano wire is more rigid than the brass wire. I also re-designed the firebox. Honestly, not much different, I think the main things is that I reduced the flare on the bottom part, and moved the queensposts outward by a fraction of a millimeter so that the wires wouldn't have a weird bend in them. The main truss rods are epoxied into the queensposts, but not the frame. That way if I have to remove the firebox, it's easy to remove. You'd be forgiven if you wondered why I left two random plastic sprue bits sitting next to the boiler Yeah, the kit included a pathetic steam pipe that didn't fit to the boiler and wasn't long enough to make it to the engine. The dry pipe is better, but I could do better. I fired up the computer and modelled two new pipes with nice flanges. Heh, the steam pipe even has the correct boiler curve to fit all nice and perfect. Can't see it in the photo, but the dry pipe also has bolt heads on the flange. The funny bit though.... We can't barely even see the steam pipe But it's a great shot to show the standard cylinder and tool box included with the kit! The next shot I decided to include for fun. I keep sending pictures to a friend (the one with the HO layout) of my progress, and he asked me to take a picture of the Shay next to my 2-8-0 - he wanted to know the size of the Shay... Next post in a few minutes!
Okay, this thing.... woo woo woo? The kit is fairly well made, and the bunker is full of rivet details, has a nice sturdy railing. The cab is nice, most detail pieces can work (if you spend enough time removing flash). But who gave up on modeling the sand box? I said No. And I just fired up my modelling software and built my own based on pictures from my books. It's not perfect, but it's good enough for me. For comparison, this is the picture I mostly used, and I eyeballed the dimensions... Granted, it's not the only picture I used. I think mine might be wider at the top, but I've got other pictures that seem to show that the angle is correct, or if not "correct", it's "good enough". But at least it looks like a sandbox and not a cardboard cutout! Ah ha! We come to the headlight.... I decided to use the kit supplied electric lamps. Detail wise they're actually not bad, anything commercial was either too expensive or not available. Bonus is that the stock head lamps are tough plastic and have a huge interior for an LED. The biggest problem is the headlight bracket. The one that came with the kit was attached to the smokestack base, and didn't tough the boiler - it sort of just sat in the air above it. So again, 3D printing to the rescue. I made a simple little bracket, nothing special. Like the steam pipe, I started with a model of the boiler (since I knew the diameter) and then whatever I 3D printed would fit like a glove. But then, the bigger issue is how to make a glass front??! I don't have any pictures of the process, but I hope this will make sense... First, I stuck a short piece of bamboo stick into my Dremel. I then cut a small piece of clear plastic (polystyrene? I can't remember the type) and hot glued that to the tip of the bamboo stick. I then tried spinning it and sanding it using a file and some wet/dry sandppaer used wet. But that didn't work, the piece of plastic kept coming off. Ah ha! but I figured out that the friction was causing too much heat and melting the hot glue! So I adjusted by sanding underwater! I just put my file and the tip of the dremel (well, only the bamboo stick) into a small pot of water and the heat problem went away. Just sand until it fit right into the headlight. To finish it off, I sanded the clear disk on 30000 grit sandpaper to slightly fog it. I'm rather proud of this I also did exactly the same out in back. Here we even see the LED inside, warm white. I think it's a 0604 sized LED. The interior of the lamp is painted silver/steel. As for the wiring, since some of the wires would be visible underneath the brackets before disappearing into the boiler/bunker, I used black ESU wire, that go to a little circuit board with a resistor, before becoming the correct colours... I also ended up sanding down the rear circuit board until it was super thin, to take up even less space. Another few random pictures... This is where the decoder will go - it's a Loksound Nano I already have on hand. When I ran the motor at full, and then grabbed the flywheel and stopped the motor turning, my multimeter showed a stall current of 300 mA. I should be able to stick a good 9x16 speaker with at least 1cc speaker enclosure behind the motor. One more post in a few minutes!
So now we're getting to the old school brass details part of the build! I'm used to doing 3D printing for parts, but they do tend to be fragile. So I started buying all sorts of different detail parts made of brass. A bit of sticker shock sometimes, but it's all fun! So, the first bit I tried working with was the injector (right in front of the cab). I've been buying a lot of the brass parts in double, given that after this I have a three-truck Shay I want to build. Whew, I'm gonna have to order more parts! I ended up cutting the lagged pipe too short, and in trying to fix it, I destroyed one injector. Out came the extra! Then came the compressors. Here above we can see that I filled in the original holes with 1/16" pieces of brass, and filed down to the shape of the boiler. It's hard to see, but we can see where I added pegs to the back of the compressor to fit into the new holes I drilled. And here it is put into place, with the bell and steam powered generator. The compressor though, that was an adventure... I first tried to add individual wires to the two compressors. But the problem is that when soldered on one wire, the heat of doing another wire would often make the others comes undone. So, I then just slipped on two long wires and heated the whole thing on a heat shield (a piece of metal plate) with a torch, and then dabbed a bit of solder to each end. Perfect! Super easy! Wait! Why are my phosphor bronze wires all discoloured??! Yeah, those wires were then as springy as wet noodles . Lucky I was able to reheat everything up and remove the wet noodle wires and save the compressors. One of which then promptly fell into my lap! My shorts have a little compressor shaped burn mark in them Oh but it doesn't end there, that compressor, still burning hot, fell onto the old rug under the workbench. By the time I picked it up, it was black with melted polyester. 15 minutes later with a dremel and wire brush I managed to clean it up! And the final picture for today... Just a bit of wire with a check valve on the right side of the boiler. Oh, and finally we have a picture of the front headlight and bracket in place. Still lots to do, and for now I have to continue with the plumbing on the boiler. It's slow but fun! Hmm, seems I did forget to mention two things in all the text up above... One tidbit is that the cab is in fact now glued to the boiler. So in the picture above, that is all one piece. The second tidbit is that the cab had molded in hand rails which I removed. I will add brass wires later when I get nearer to the end of detailing. I started keeping a TODO list of all of the details I need to finish before getting to paint. it's still a long list! Enjoy!
0.003 < 0.008... I think it's the other way around, K&S is 0.008" Edit: Cripes, I think I quoted an old post. Need to keep better track of where I am...
Lol, no worries, I get stuff wrong all the time, just a few posts back I said I used 30000 grit sandpaper, I really meant 3000. And yes, I did get those two mixed up, and even went back to the stuff to make sure... and he's proof of my incompetence! I much prefer the metric system where I can clearly see that 0.0762mm is thinner than 0.2032mm. Yeah, lets all pretend that's why I couldn't see that .003 is thinner than .008 Seriously though, is it confusing? I know in my posts I mix up both imperial and metric measurements - I tend to work mostly in millimeters (metric rulers, modelling in mm, calipers in mm, etc), but the reality is that most of the materials I buy tend to be in fractions of inches, so in the end, my posts contain both (also, I honestly cannot visualize what 0.003" looks like - and watching Adam Savage videos on Youtube, I get really confused when he talks of getting to a couple "mil" or a "thou" - is 0.003 three mil or three thou? ) (don't get me started about Fahrenheits, I cannot tell if 78 F is hot or cool without looking it up - except -40F, but that one doesn't come up often )
It also works the other way. In building the steam locomotive, I've become pretty aware of the significance of small fractions of an inch. Recently, when trying to include supports in CAD rather than the slicer, I had to do some mm->inch conversion so I could figure out how small to make support contacts, just couldn't see it in mm. In my former day job, got used to metric magnitudes down to a millimeter. Past that...
Just one photo for today, but it's an important one! After much gnashing of teeth, at least one yell of frustration, and I've done the majority of plumbing on the left side of the boiler! it's not entire finished, nothing is glued down yet, but the bending is done. Sheesh, this was difficult, I guess the placement of the injector and the compressor are not ideal, and looking at the Handbook, I can see that they opted to place the brass compressor and injector at slightly different locations that probably helped. All the lines you see giving into the frame of the locomotive will not be glued down, when I take off the boiler and put it back down, I just need to guide each wire into it's corresponding hole in the frame, turns out it's pretty simple. There's still work to do of course. the governor is still in the mail and will be slipped and glued down onto the wire existing the rear top of the compressor and going into the cab. I also want to add the steam pipe under the frame from the large vertical injector pipe to the bunker. and (maybe) add a .01" or 0.015" wire from the injector to the cab. But those are tiny details.
