With no scale scenery to judge it by, it is kind of difficult to ascertain its scale speed, but with the dial set at 1 on the Zephyr, she'll creep pretty well. I would just like to set a reasonable top speed as you said, these things should go slllllloooowwww. I have programmed the Z2 in my 2-8-0 to have a slower top speed, but never ran it on such a large loop. Still thinking feeder count is the issue. Running it on untiram would be interesting, I could make my turn back blobs smaller. Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
Chris..... Unitrack straights are close enough to 12 inches to use this speed calculator... http://www.stonysmith.com/railroad/speedcalc.asp Set it to n scale Set it to 12 inches Set 'time to travel this distance" to 7 click calculate you will see that scale speed at 7 seconds per 12 inches is 15.58 scale MPH **You could probably time 8 seconds per 12 inches and get a better shay top speed of 13.64 scale mph
This one did not need a whole lot of break in time. It will do an eight inch curve. It will take either inner or outer curves on UNITRAM trackage. In addition, it will go over and through the turnout on the inner trackage of the UNITRAM track. It will do the curves and the turnout at ten SMPH. It will run on the straight at walking speed. This is a real bonus, as more than one Shay did street running. I have stopped trying to use the outer turnout on the UNITRAM as the placement of the insulators and the diamonds cause too many locomotives to stall due to lack of contact. As most street trackage is single track, anyhow, I cut the curve and straight sections. I took a look at the turnouts, but it looked like I would render them useless if I tried to cut them. Instead, I leave it there to simulate abandoned street trackage. When I get down to the finer details of scenicking, I can "pave over" some of it, as well. This one rarely stalls, as opposed to those from the first run. I did get one good one from the first run, but, sadly, when I took off the shell for painting and lettering and put it back, it would not run. Someone who knows a little about these things informed me that I had to put the rods and gear back exactly as they came from the factory, or it would run poorly. I never could get it back quite right. The other two that I have run well--when they run. They stall constantly. Nothing that I have tried has remedied that. This one, so far, is a real winner. It runs nicely at walking speed. I am glad that Atlas made some improvements.
The two from my first run never experienced any stall issues and they were some of the first issued, and they were what I had running up my 6% and running through the 8 inch radius. So hopefully these new ones will perform similarly. I thought my order would have shipped by now but it looks like the middle of next week before they get in my hands. Nice to hear that they are going through the 8 inch because that means I don't have to tweak any of my layout plans. The site that I am monitoring has only 6 left now so it looks like by tomorrow they may be sold out.
So I did a factory reset to start fresh. By reducing CV 66 to 1 I get a top speed of 33smph. As soon as I start messing with CV 5, I start getting the erratic behavior. Either it will get to a certain speed and take off, or it will gradually speed up and then hit the brakes and start off slow again all on its own. I'm going to do some searching to see if anyone else has this issue. I did get it down by reducing the throttle top speed percentage though, but that won't be a viable option to have to keep fooling with for each engine on a layout. Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk Edit: So by activating 128 speed step mode and programming CV 67 to 2, I can get it down to 1.04smph without stalling. Thanks for the help guys. Looks like it is time to dig out and set up the pr3 and join the computer age!
I put six Atlas wood boxcars, of recent manufacture and an Athearn wood caboose behind mine. It crawled four feet in two minutes and thirty-five seconds. That is about 2,8 SMPH--an upbeat walking speed, but walking speed nonetheless. Impressive. It did drag those six cars up a 2,2 per-cent grade at fifteen SMPH and showed no sign of slipping. Like its older cousin, it is finicky about dirty track. Oh, and thank you for the link.
Got my Shay and it does stall occasionally. Any tips/hints on what does help fix? (or attempted fixes that don't help? Cleaning of the wipers/wheels doesn't seem to be the problem? Thx for sharing stall-fixing experience.
The Gauntlet 2.0, a 9.75" R 7% grade slog. She couldn't handle the pewter flat car with Willys in the consist, but with some Frog Snot I think she'll pull an Abrams up 10%. Stalling issues, DCC or stock? My stalls have all been track related since this is the first time I've run since moving, and only 4 feeder sets. Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
John: Did you install a decoder in your new Atlas Two Truck Shay? If so can you post some photo's? Having fun with it..... Shades
Hi, RedRiverRR4433, No, I didn't install a decoder. Just got one of the just-released new run Atlas Shay (my first)..... it creeps well, but then stops occasionally. I will need to clean track, clean wheels, clean wipers/wheel backs.... and see if the problem goes away. Hopefully, John
This thing, like its older cousin, is finicky about dirty track. It will stall where others will run, but, once you track erase, the problem goes away and stays away (until that section of track is dirty, again, that is). Except for dirty track or not properly thrown turnouts, my new Shay does not stall as do the two from the first run. I can not fault the model for those two problems. Mine will run at walking speed. In fact, I had its running at walking speed for almost one hour as it pulled the six Atlas wood boxcars of recent manufacture and the Athearn wood caboose. As a rule, factory overgreasing is not a problem with Atlas products, although I have seen it in several, but not all, of the FM roadswitchers. I have not seen this in other Atlas power, but, it would not hurt to check it. I have yet to be able to put conclusive blame for some of the problems that I have had with the Atlas FM roadswitchers on overlubrication, but, when you see the oil everywhere, you know that it is not helping, so you clean it up. The problems that I have had with the Atlas FM roadswitchers came up long after they were out-of-warranty, so, with the exception of the overlubrication, I give Atlas no brickbats on that. One the one or two occasions that I have had a problem with an Atlas product that was in-warranty, Atlas acted swiftly to correct the problem. The only time that I ever have been able to blame a problem on overlubrication was with some of the first and second runs of the IM FTs. When I sent an e-Mail to IM about that, an IM Official did take the time to reply to me and let me know that: IM was aware of the problem: another IM Official was on his way to China to handle several matters and that the overlubrication matter was on his agenda. IM customer service always has been top-drawer. IM does want you to be happy with what you buy from them and will go out of its way to make everything right. This Shay is an excellent model that I would recommend to anyone.
I haven't tested my new one yet. But in the old one - there was virtually no lateral flexibility on the trucks, if you had a horizontal warp in the track structure the treads would lift on one truck of the other. So particularly around switches, you needed to shim stuff absolutely level or it would stall on an insulated frog.
I have a slight bump in the track at the bridge where the grade levels in The Gauntlet, trucks swivel up and down just enough.
Not up and down - twist. The trucks didn't hardly twist at all, so the surface 'warp' was a problem on electrical contact.
Well still setting back and monitoring one east coast seller who has real time inventory and dag nabbit waiting for my two to ship. Normally would have had shipping confirmation by Email by now so I don't know the delay. Maybe the Dread Pirate Roberts sailed up the bay into the Port of Baltimore and absconded with my order. Anyway the real time inventory show only 3 left now so they are going about at the rate the K4 and FEF went, maybe a little faster due to some of the narrow gauge folks.
I would call em John. Make sure they got your order ok and that you are in the loop as far as shipping.
Well on their website I can check my order and it says processed and ready to ship, plus I get a conformation Email when I order which I print out and keep until I have the order. I know they were behind on shipping with the storm we had and they had an announcement to that effect on the site that updated daily when shipping would occur. However that announcement was not up when I ordered so they had caught up from the blizzard of 16. However tomorrow a phone call may be in order.
John, I probably ordered from the same outfit; ordered on 2/3 and shipping notice today. That's the longest I've ever seen them take to process.
