Thank you for the heads up, randgust, I will try the fix. When it comes to small and slow power, you are the man. I suspect that having only one wheel turning the whole business on the driveshaft might have been part of my problem, though. I am wondering if the appropriate front truck wheelset was not engaging the gear on the forward shaft. What you have is too many stress vectors and too many joints being driven by one pair of gears so that the whole business might have jammed due to that. Add to that the stress points created by the truck as the gear on the motorshaft engages the idler gear in the truck and the direction of spin creates a bias to one side. Cranking up the RPM on the motor would help to overcome the resistance, but you would hear the equivalent of "complaining" as the thing makes that proverbial "coffee grinder" noise. As the thing is now, when the driveshaft does not turn, whatever the direction, it is the whole business that does not turn, not just one shaft or the other. The problem might be that the front truck was, and still is, not pulling its weight. It looked like the problem was in the aft truck, as it was buckling, so that is the one that I disassembled. I never touched the fore truck. I did swap positions on the aft truck wheelsets several times, to the point that now I do not remember which one was which. In reality, the aft truck might not have been the problem, as it might have buckled due to the excessive resistance. Another thing that I noticed on this one, be it first or second run, is that when it does get balky, it does so when the cylinders are facing the outboard side of a curve. This applies on anything from a seven through a nine and three quarter, eleven, eleven and one quarter, thirteen and three quarter, seventeen to a nineteen inch radius curve. There is somewhat less balking on the eleven than there is on the seven, but there is not much less balking on the nineteen than there is on the eleven. I noticed this on the thirteen and three quarter S curves on the main line of the Short Creek and Nopedale portion of the pike: it was balking on one part, but when it hit the other direction of curvature, it opened up. I noticed that it was balky when the cylinders faces the outboard side of the curve. I tried it on the UNITRAM (seven to nine inch radius and what must be a #2 or #3 turnout) , on the reverse loop at Trona-Roderick Small Engines (nine and three quarters), on the track at Short Creek Junction (thirteen and three quarter and eleven as well as #4 and #6 turnouts) as well as the seventeen and nineteen inch curves of the Four Capitals trackage. The one thing on which I did not try it was the earlier B-mann E-Z TRAK turnouts, those with the really sharp diverging. I ran the balky power in both directions to find that the results were consistent with my suspicions. The track on the pike is a mixture of Atlas flex and sectional, Kato UNITRAK, B-mann E-Z TRAK Kato UNITRAM and PECO ELECTROFROG and INSULFROG turnouts. The turnouts of all of the above brands also are on the pike, #4 and #6 plus whatever the degree is on the UNITRAM.
My Shay with the front truck issue was sent out today and won't make it up the New Jersey until Tuesday because of the holiday Monday. I sent it with all the required paperwork and there is a window of 4 to 6 weeks on repair. Also included in the note that if they decided on replacement rather than repair that it did not matter on road name. This will be the first time I have ever used an Atlas warranty and repair service on any of their products. I have utilized their parts department on occasion and it has always been satisfactory.
I used it on a first run Shay. In the end, the service was good. They made sure that everything was right.
The only time I needed to use Atlas warranty service, they did right by me. Ahead of the promised return date too.
When my first run Shay arrived, the rear driveshaft was broken. Atlas repaired it in a little over a week and it's been fine ever since. I was satisfied
Well it will be interesting to find out what went wrong with my one while the other performed flawlessly. Not anything electrical since both trucks picked up power. For whatever reason the front truck is no longer connected to the drive shaft. I tried using a 9 Volt battery while I gently positioned the front truck but to no avail. The visible gears in the truck bottom spin freely with a gentle nudge while the other still functioning truck a gentle nudge produces no movement indicating that one to be firmly connected to the drive train. The now non powered truck appears be still firmly set in the chassis. Also the loco sets level and the truck swivels freely and level. My best guess is either the worm gear is spinning loose on the shaft, or the gear tower gears have come loose, either one a quality control issue. Either way at my age and eyesight I'm not about to try and go into the mechanism. Thus it is already part way to Atlas to look into.
Does the slow speed performance depend on the track power; DCC or plain old DC? My Shay won't reliably run below about 10 mph on DCC. Below that speed it stutters and eventually stops.
^^^^^^^^^^This thing is EXTREMELY finicky about dirty track. The first run was the same way. In fact, I must take a Q-tip wet with LL track cleaner to the frogs of the Kato UNITRAK turnouts with greater frequency, as those things attract dirt more than most track does. I do not use DCC, but one thing that I have heard repeated about it more than once is that it is touchy about dirty track, as well. Add the two together, and you get................. I have my two from the second run down to a brisk walking speed, although the troublesome one still does bind on rare occasion. It is taking less and less increase in throttle to free the mechanism, so I am expecting that the binding will go away. One from the first run is down to ten SMPH. The other one from the first run is down to about fifteen SMPH, but the motor cogs with frequency, still.
In testing mine running DC on my dedicated test track, that was freshly cleaned, few issues with stalling. When I did experience it I went over the spot with a Brite Boy again which got rid of the issue. I got the slow speed down to taking 3 min. 40 secs. on 16 feet of track with the throttle barely cracked although I did not have a meter set up to measure voltage. Performance did noticeably improve from out of the box until almost and hour later. The out of the box was two minutes 25 seconds over the same 16 feet at slightly higher throttle. During my testing I was also running three Shays at times on the same power pack using one of my older ones as a benchmark for the newer.
I had the same experience that you did with the track eraser. Yours were running at 12,04 SMPH out of the box. You got it down to 7,93 SMPH. Pretty good.
And I did not do anything special other than clean the track and blow everything off with air. Break in run was about an hour at moderate throttle and speed, both directions, before I started adding cars. I figured someone would do the math. I will break out the test track again when I get the other one back from Atlas to see if further running slows them down some more. But I am quite happy with the performance so far. I will say that they came more than well packed. I had to use a pair of fine point tweezers to work them out of the box.
I've cleaned the dirty track and the behavior does not change. From a standing start I can advance the throttle with no movement until a threshold is reached and then movement at about 15 mph. Slowing down, movement stops at about 10 mph or upon encountering dirty track. I have diesels that will creep along much slower. The performance may improve with more break-in. Or not. The diesels have decoders which greatly assist slow speed running whereas the Shay relies on the motor and the DCC simulated DC power. Has anyone put a decoder in a Shay? I can imagine there is almost no room for one.
The results I got were by simply putting both on the test track, setting the throttle to about 30 NSMPH and letting them run for about and hour, occasionally changing direction. I got a little over 12 NSMPH out of the box but an hour of running got it down to a shade under 8 NSMPH. I have always been a proponent of break in running and it seems to be working for me here. As far as decoder installation it has been done. There are articles on Google and YouTube on decoders in the N scale Shays just make sure you query N scale Shays because there are a number of them in other scales. Somebody even did sound.
John, I looked into the decoder installation and have decided for now I will be content to enjoy my Shay as-is. I will also continue break-in and then do a more precise speed measurement. Thank you for sharing your experience.
I installed Lenz 521W decoders in all my five first run Shays in 2005 and two TCS Z 2 decoders in two of new Atlas Two Truck Shays. These installations are not easy installations, but the speed control is rewarding with DCC. Having fun with it..... Shades
FWIW I did some digging in the old Atlas archives, and if this isn't the exact prototype, well, I'll have to go back to HO: http://www.shaylocomotives.com/data/lima3354/sn-3300.htm
Shades, do you have a preference for the Lenz or TCS decoder? Does the isolated motor ease the installation much?
One thing I found about the TCS decoder, you cannot get scale speed at all by just modifying the three point speed curve. Dropping CV 5 below 100 causes havoc. Be prepared to do 28/128. Sent from my XT1585 using Tapatalk
The TCS Z2 decoder makes for an easier installation due to its small size. The Lenz decoders were fine when I used them in 2005 (Lenz 521W which was the pre-cursor of the Lenz Mini silver decoder). The isolated motor helps somewhat but there isn't much room to work with. The TCS Z Scale Z2 is an easy fit near the worm gear. You still must be careful soldering the wires from the decoder to the motor contacts. contact strips and the front and rear leds. Have fun with it..... Shades
