I have read its way oversized for N scale. If you have one what do you think of yours overall? How does it run?
Someone else asked about this within the past several months. I have not seen one in years, so my memory is vague. I believe they were slightly on the large side. But a real such three truck Shay, when seen in person, is actually fair sized in inself. Seems as though it had an all enclosed style cab, which would be more toward the Willamette style.
I looked at one a number of years ago and decided not to go with it because it was out of proportion in size. It is also lacking one set of cylinders as a three trucker has three, this one has two. Scalewise it is larger than the biggest Shay ever made which is at Cass WV. Spookshow's review doesn't give it bad grades in the performance end though and it was better in performance than the other brass one made by another manufacturer. Overall though it really pales in comparison to the Atlas Shay for detail and scale. Although I would dearly love to have a three trucker I'll bide my time and wait until Atlas produces one on the current chassis which does suprise me that they haven't yet. Not too much of a big thing to simply run a tender and another truck. Only the rear truck would have to be modified to accept the third drive shaft and the boiler lengthened slightly for the third cylinder set.
One thing i think that would be nice is that if atlas made a 3 truck shay....even if its a foobie using a lot of parts from the 2-truck one, the prospect of me buying one is a lot better than buying 2 200+ locos and kit-bashing them. Now don't get me started about how rare just the two-truck one is on certain internet auction sites...the only 3 truck shay in N i think was the WM big 6...and that is one rare prototype, brass, and not even a good runner, and has to be disassembled to paint. I understand why there aren't a lot of mining/logging layouts in N-scale or if they are they are in the diesel era.
i have had a joe works three truck shay. for it's era,it ran pretty good. a little noisy though. it had good gear reduction too as i recall. the third truck is not powered as there is no mechanical connection to it. if the joe works shay is the only shay on your layout,or you use it as a background model the size will not be too obvious. but,if you have any of the atlas shays then it will look out of place. the main reason i sold mine was the size disparity,it is actually a small ho locomotive. as to it only having a two cylinder engine,i have seen a pic of a shay like it that was built with a two cylinder engine. so,a prototype did exist.
Right now, I would be happy if Atlas would produce the run of shays that were announced going on 4 years ago. I am beginning to doubt those will ever ship and would not hold my breath for a 3 truck version from them. I have two from the second run and was planning on buying two more from this run to build a 3 truck but I don't see that happening now. As far as the Joe Works shay. I have had one in my hand, albiet in pieces, but it is huge compared to an Atlas shay and even big compared to the Brass WM #6.
I don't consider it a N scale locomotive by any strech of the imagination, it is more like HOn3 or HOn30, and still way out of porportioned even for that. Add the fact that their was no 2 cylinder 3 truck shays, and I consider it nothing but shelf fodder. I had the oppurtunity to buy one a few years ago, I passed.
They did make an HOn30 Shay. It was a two truck. Many of them required a bit of effort to run decently. A photo can be seen here: http://www.koala-creek.net/2010/08/shay-version-0-1/
