That's the gearing. Well, that and the multiple cylinders of the three and four truck units. Unfortunately, it sounds like these models are geared like a normal locomotive. That's a shame. Not only would lower gears enable them to operate in a more realistic manner, and haul more weight while doing it, but they would probably make it possible for a normal steam sound unit to sound correct--i.e. sound like they're doing eighty when they're doing 15.
I decided to give a call this evening since they were still open rather than wait another day. And probably the same outfit. I ordered on the 4th and usually they ship about two days after. Gentleman I spoke to said that they had experienced a heavier volume than usual and my order should go out on the 10th. That is provided that the 8 inches of snow they are forecast for doesn't turn out to be 16 inches. At least they are coming.
I ordered mine on the Third and got the "Your order has shipped" e-Mail to-day. The USPS tracking shows that it was picked up to-day just before 1100 at the certain well known e-Tailer that also has a brick and mortar establishment. USPS has not updated it since then. Assuming that it gets out of the Baltimore postal facility to-night before the snow starts, I would expect that it would be here to-morrow, unless USPS is not going to deliver the mail to-morrow. If not, I would expect it by Wedenesday. This is the longest that it has taken. Usually, it comes within forty eight hours. When I ordered all of the Fox Valley waggontop cabooses, though, it did take seventy-two hours.
Well I was hoping to have my two on Monday and hopefully testing today, but (sigh) probably won't be until Friday. Oh well at least they are coming, I got a good price, I got the paint scheme I wanted, and it is nice to see a hobby shop that is thriving.
I have finished breaking in the one that I bought at Timonium and put it to work on the most demanding job on the pike: station switcher at Short Creek Junction. So far, it is performing the job admirably. It did stall once, but that was due to dirty track. This thing is finicky about clean track. Some of that might have to do with wheel blacking, I am not sure. Short Creek Junction is where the old Washington-Harrisburg-Annapolis-Dover (formerly known as the Four Capitals) crosses the Short Creek and Nopedale. Several prototypes now operate the Four Capitals. The job of station switcher at Short Creek Junction is quite demanding, as that locomotive must pull cars from through and local freights destined for points on the Short Creek and Nopedale and put cars from the SC&N into those freights. Further, as mail and express is an important contributor to revenue on the SC&N, the Short Creek Junction station switcher also pulls cars from and adds cars to the passenger trains operating over the old WHAD. The station switcher also does some work in making up and breaking down the trains that SC&N operates through Short Creek Junction. The switcher that has performed the task best so far is the Atlas Baldwin. As of now, I am giving it an edge over the Atlas Shay on pulling/pushing power only. So far, the Shay has performed every bit as well as the Baldwin. The Bachmann USRA 0-6-0, modified with a SPECTRUM tender, was a close second to the Baldwin. I operated it over the Baldwin simply because I wanted a steam switcher and this one was, and still is, an excellent performer. The Shay has edged out the 0-6-0 in pulling/pushing power and smooth creeping, so far, but it is only slightly ahead of the 0-6-0. The top three are close together. Other power that I have used for that task has been, in order of level-of-performance: B-mann SPECTRUM 2-8-0, MDC 2-8-0, B-mann 2-6-0, MDC 2-6-0, Atlas RS-1, Atlas FM roadswitcher, Kato NW-2. The Kato NW-2 had a "good" performance as that station switcher. The one that I ordered from that certain e-tailer that also has a brick and mortar establishment near a major East Coast city and is also known for good prices showed up to-day. It is still in break in. The only thing that I have managed to notice about it is that it runs.
So tempted to order another before they're gone, but can't afford it right now. It looks like there is another order coming soon though. Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
I test-ran mine last night and got an unpleasant surprise - the entire rear truck isn't picking up at all on either wheelset. The pickups are there, nothing is happening. Only the front truck is electrically 'hot' so it is very erratic in performance. You can raise the front of the locomotive gently under power and it stops, raise the rear and it still runs, and it stalled out a lot. You can even force the rear truck down and nothing happens. I'll take the body off and see what's up here, I suspect the little 'ears' on the contacts aren't touching the 'ring'. But if you're having pickup/stalling issues, do that simple test. I know Atlas made some minor tweaks, just haven't seen much evidence of it yet. I have test spot I put my Climax models through - an old Atlas #6 crossover with plastic frogs, diverging route to diverging route. That configuration alternately 'drops out' each side of a pickup truck, one side at a time, to test electrical pickup consistency - if both sides of both trucks aren't picking up properly, it can't make it through it. That's the kind of test that 'may not' be done when these things left the factory as a QC test. It runs OK, so far, except for what 'looks like' being poor on electrical pickup, but if the entire back truck isn't working electrically that's the issue. I'll be able to run this 'end to end' with the first-run Shay which will conclusively prove if there are difference between the runs (good or bad) that can only be associated with the second run. My first run one actually runs quite well.
My second one showed up yesterday. It runs very nicely in forward (smokestack first). It runs horribly in reverse (fuel/water tank first). The mechanism binds, it makes the proverbial coffee grinder racket. Any curve magnifies the problem. I have managed to get a little better performance out of it by running the dickens out of it, but it is still unsatisfactory. I took out my remaining two from the first run and did a comparison. In addition, I listened closely to my first one from the second run, All of them do make some racket in reverse, some less than others. It seems that these things prefer to run in forward. As these things were designed to run in either direction, "forward only" is not satisfactory. My first one from the second run still runs and operates very nicely, so I am happy with it. I am going to try running the second one from the second run a little more to see if I can get it to run better. I am wondering if there is a misaligned gear somewhere, or something. The sharper the curve, the more racket that it makes in reverse. When the mechanism does bind, a little extra throttle will get it to move, again. Funny thing is that it does not wobble, which is usually a hint of a misaligned gear. I am wondering if the Topol (@) solution might work here, although I do shy from it, as I do not want to have to take apart this thing. I did that once, and learned, after I had taken it apart, that if you do not put the drive shafts back exactly as they were, it will not run properly. I still have that one, I just do not try even to run it. I lost a few screws to it, as well. My remaining two from the first run were stalling constantly. I love LL Track Cleaner. I put some onto a Q-tip and swabbed/squeezed track cleaner onto the truck wipers and contact surface under the chassis, put it onto the track and ran them at full throttle. They jerked, sputtered, then took off. Now, they are running without the stalling, although one is showing some bind in reverse, although not as bad as the second one from the second run. I doubt that dirt is causing the problem about which randgust is complaining, unless his was overgreased at the factory. I am wondering if some or all of these were greased at the factory, as the second one from the second run makes so much noise. I did apply a little LaBelle #106 to it, but it did not help. I did try adjusting the "bendy tabs" on the first run locomotives, with no improvement. It turns out that it was dirt. I wonder how those things accumulated so much dirt so quickly. The major enemies of anything N scale that moves are: 1. dirt 2. dirt 3. dirt 4. dirt 5. dirt 6. crud 7. more dirt ............I guess that it should be obvious by now. I learned the hard way many years back that even wheel crud can cause all sorts of problems. It causes derailments while still on the wheel and when it does fall off the wheels, it gets smashed onto the track and causes loss of electrical contact and more derailments. Either that, or it gets picked up by the locomotive(s) and gets into the mechanism or into the contact points and causes stalling or binding. But, I stray. Dirt is not a problem on this one, at least not Y-E-T. I did look on the bottom of the trucks, and did not see any stray lubrication. The gears did look dry. EDITORIAL NOTE: One thing that the second one from the second run is doing, sometimes, and more frequently as I run it more is locking up on the straight section after it leaves the curve. It locks up less on the curve, anymore, but what it does is go through the curve, make the coffee grinder noises, then go anywhere from six to twelve inches on the straight, stop making coffee grinder noises then lock up. A little bit of throttle will get it going again. It makes much less coffee grinder noise on the straight than on the curve. The section of the pike on which I am running it is in the shape of a dogbone; a four foot straight N-TRAK module with two three-by-four ends on it. The dogbone shape consists of UNITRAK thirteen and three quarter curves. That means that there are two S curves on each end, The thing will lock up on curves, but not always on the S-curves or right after leaving them.
I should have started another thread on the trials and tribulations of acquiring the new Shays. However they finally arrived about 30 minutes ago, almost frozen like little ice cubes with wheels, and not with out a little drama. First of all my dealer was a little late in sending me the shipping link to track them, aboout two days late. Then the notice I received by Email stated they had been delivered and were at the door two hours ago. Not. A frustrating call to the USPS to figure what happened deduced that maybe the carrier had punched their little device when he should not have since we had not received our daily quota of junk mail yet. Sure enough about two hours later the box arrived at the door with our daily ration of junk mail. Tomorrow I get to testing when these little rascals are thawed out.
My Shay arrive; Argentine Central #4. Another fallen flag. It runs well and is cute. Looks like an excellent candidate for Z scale couplers.
I've installed Z scale #905 couplers on all my first run Atlas Two Truck Shays. They are more prototypically correct than the couplers that were factory installed on this locomotive. Have fun with it... Shades
OK, well, it only took one day and I'm tearing it apart. There are four screws up under the sills above the truck sideframes that have to come out. That will drop out the coupler box, and an odd-looking brass shim that looks like an afterthought. Once you get those screws out, the mechanism drops out intact and cleanly. The screws are tiny and so is the shim, work over a tray or something to catch parts. Definitely a different motor than the first, a longer-armature version of the motor that Kato uses in the critter and Bachmann uses in the 44/70 tonner, same general case design. Again, there's nothing keeping the worms in alignment with the gear towers but the motor mount, no shaft bearings. Not really different in concept. The worm looks finer in pitch but I could be wrong. If Atlas says they changed the gearing, that's where. The pickup system looks identical to the first version, same semi-insulated pickup wiper on the bottom of the frame with a nub wiper on top of the trucks. The tabs coming off of that go to a new LED headlight board fore and aft, and to the motor leads in the center. And, in mine at least, there's the problem. The front truck nubs and wiper are in constant contact; the front truck picks up quite well. The back truck is another story entirely, the right-rear wheel pickup simply isn't contacting the frame wiper properly, the truck is also much looser in the frame than the front. The front frame strips, and the left rear one, are mildly sprung against the nub, Right rear is loose. When it stalls, and you put a needle in there at that contact spot, it immediately restarts. It is not dirt, excess lubrication, or any other mystery, it is the assembly tolerances on that pickup wiper. It is clearly hand-assembled in the solder work (i.e variable), so what I'm telling you is that YOUR model may not have this problem. But if you are having pickup issues, I'm telling you to be very suspect of this area. How well this picks up is not just design, its individual assembly. It may be possible to just bend that frame wiper down to better contact the nub, the nub up to contact the wiper, or both. I think it's user-fixable without resoldering anything, but we'll see. If anything, there was no detectable lubrication on mine at all. If you are testing one, give it a little power, gently lift the front truck off the rails - it should keep running. Repeat with the rear truck, same thing. What I also suspect is that a lot of this could have made it out the door and passed final assembly testing without detection until you're running it on a real layout. There's no way mine is running over an insulated switch frog without stalling. When mine is running, it's running pretty well. The driveshaft 'clattering' is less on mine than on the first one, but my first one doesn't stall over the same exact spot that this one completely halts. Stay tuned for further reports.
Thx, all, for the continued reports on debugging and improving the electrical pickup. Encouraging that it sounds fixable. Keep the reports coming. Photos? (when I tear into mine (someday) to find/fix my electrical pickup as reported above, I'll take photos and post).
Sounds like outsourcing the decoder install may have also saved me from having to physically tinker thus far. Maybe I'll start turnout testing this weekend. Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
To really get in there and do it right for pictures, the rear truck should come off to show the contacts. I took the trucks off of my first-run one and it was by far one of the dumbest things I've ever done, because it proved to me how the 'slack' in the drive train has to be perfect to keep the gears from fighting the driveshaft. Remember the motor powers both trucks, and BOTH trucks are connected to the driveshaft on the side as an idler Unless you've put indicator marks on the truck worm gear, the motor shaft, and everything else that's going to come apart so that you can put it back together EXACTLY the way it was when you started, do not ever take off the trucks!!!! The result will be the gears overpower the driveshaft, and the weakest link will pop somewhere. That was the universal/shaft joint at the cylinders. Sproing! Finding those parts and resetting that shaft about had me shaking. I resolved never to do that again if I could get it running right like it was before I 'fixed' it. So I'm going to tinker with mine with the trucks on, which makes it virtually impossible to photograph, and I don't want to encourage anybody else to tinker with theirs without the above warning. Oh, one tip I can give you is that Neolube really worked well on my first-run, covered up the silver-looking parts and also didn't accumulate any goo. That graphite-base seems to work pretty well as a lubricant for the driveshafts as well as improve appearance.
The above is a warning to which one should pay heed. I failed to learn from my experience on the first run. I took apart my troublesome second run, but funny, there has been some improvement but at a cost. As my first run Shay that I disassembled is good only for parts, I though that I might try to swap out some things. It would not work. The truck frames and wheelsets will not interchange. The wheelsets on the first run have the gears in the middle of the axle; they are offset on the second run. Consequently, the slots on the second run truck frames are off-center to accommodate the off-center gears. So I put the thing back together. The coffee grinder noise has gone away. The buckling in the aft truck (the one under the tank) has gone away. The mechanism's binding has been reduced to maybe ten per-cent of what it was. The thing will creep at three miles per hour. All good, -eh? The price was that now the drive shafts will not rotate all the time. They do rotate most of the time in "forward" (smokebox first), but most of the time they will not in "reverse" (tank first). As randgust points out, these things were put together individually, so there is variance, just as there was in the first run. My first one required little break in and is working one of the most demanding jobs on my pike and doing it well. The other one has been a problem. It appears that some of us will receive an excellent locomotive, some of us will receive a lemon. I got one of each. Funny, the prototype builder on the other "hot" power release this month, the Centipede, built each of those individually, rendering locomotives that varied in their performance and construction. The model builder on these things did the same with similar results.
(waving his hand wildly in the air) Hey, I know that one. The 'works only one way' problem. There's a tiny bevel gear on the driveshaft that engages the gears molded on ONE of the two axles on the trucks. One on each truck. Two things can go wrong: 1) wheel mounts on the axle space the gear mesh too far in, so the gears don't engage. Fix = regauge the wheels with the 'gear wheel' closer to the driveshaft. That also helps the 'clicking' problem, as the clicking is the bevel gear not properly engaging the wheel. It's not a split-axle wheel, the position of the wheels on the axle is another variable. 2) Bevel gear is too close to the gear edge (likely here) so that if there's any lateral play in the driveshaft, it doesn't engage the gear teeth on the wheel. Fix = SLIGHTLY push the bevel gear on the silver shaft closer to the center of the truck. Maybe .005-.010 will do it. It's a push fit. I think you can do this with a pair of tweezers and everything still assembled. I've studied the design for hours and have just marveled about it, particularly the universals and sliding driveshafts. I tried to do that myself on a scratchbuilt 25-tonner and failed. The only thing that still baffles me a bit is why the driveshaft is spun from BOTH trucks, rather than one truck, because I think that's where a lot of the clicking/bucking/fighting comes from. I've been really tempted to take one and remove one bevel gear and really focus on making the other perfect so see if it would power the drivetrain through just one axle. But I haven't done it and won't unless something catastrophically fails. I think though, that this sounds like the Shay version of the "Beardon Block" fix on the old Atlas Classic diesels - sounds really nuts until you try it. Or is just nuts. Generally, I'm the kind of guy that fearlessly tears down mechanisms and makes modifications without a second thought. This one though, well, it's about had me several times. I treat it with great respect and great caution.
Broke out the test track for the two new Shays that arrived yesterday. Did some break in running on my 11 inch radius oval that gives me about 16 feet of running. Then went for the slow speed crawl. The first time around took 2 minutes 25 seconds. Dialed it down a little more and slowed it to 3 minutes and 45 seconds for the 16 foot lap. And I had my first run out and did some comparison on speeds and they have definitely geared these down from original production. Top end is about half. The older version will lap the newer at full throttle. Comparing the two from the bottom there is a different style cover plate also. No excessive lube showing. Seems that with my two the running characteristics are the same either direction and the noise factor on curves is proportional to the speed. Almost quiet at low speeds. First test at water level grade was double headed with 37 and 40 foot cars, some with loads, for a total of 24 cars. Could have taken more. Then disaster struck. One Shay malfunctioned with the front truck no longer being powered. Examination reveal nothing visible so it is going to Atlas for warranty repair. Testing continued with the remaining loco and handled 17 cars on water level. When I switched to the next oval which has 9.75 inch radius I had to drop to 17 cars for the single loco. Next tested at grade. Single loco took 12 cars up a 3% and walked 7 cars up a a 5 % grade. The old Shay took 9 cars up the 5%. Maybe the fact that the older is more broke in or by chance heavier. I had no issues with stalling on frogs and the tight Peco St5 and 6s it handled fine and they are right about 7 inch radius. Took it on the inner track which is 8 radius curves. No issues with derailment however it got a little louder and you could tell it wasn't totally happy with it. By comparison I ran the old Shay also and it was more at home. In stacking up the old versus the new I have to give the edge to the old. The old I was 2 for 2 on performance. The new 1 for 2 with one going back for repairs. Old was quiet at speed from the get go. New version is noisy at speed on curves only, in either direction. Neither likes dirty track and both handle the frogs on Atlas #6 and Peco STs
