Part 6: Shay conversion
Entry posted by M Graff
2,393 views
Hello in the cold 
.
I took the opportunity while I'm still snowed in to address a couple of projects I have been keeping on the shelf.
The first is my Shay locomotive. It is a H0 scale, 3 truck 80-ton Shay from Bachmann and their Spectrum series.
The locomotive has led to many concerns, repairs and other headaches....
The first thing that happened was that the Tsunami sound decoder that I ordered did not fit ....
So I had to build a new tender shell from brass to make it fit:
Then the drive gears on the drive line cracked one by one ... :? .
Luckily, NWSL in the U.S. makes new gears made of steel instead of the originals that are in plastic!
Then the locomotive worked "good", except that it was not possible to back up through a switch, because then the middle boogie would derail guaranteed.
I was doing all sorts of adjustments and fine-tuning without much success.
Then I thought: :-Aha! I can rebuild it.!
I had already mounted the sound decoder in another of my locomotives (that happens ...),
and I had just bought a Lenz Gold decoder, the foundation for the project was laid.
I've always appreciated the look of two truck Shay´s, and to rebuild it from three truck to two truck ought to work.
I dismantled the whole locomotive into pieces:
And after some measurements I put the saw firmly to the chassis!
I cut off a piece of the chassis behind the rear bolster and cut the tender chassie in the same place. I glued together the two halves with epoxy and reinforced the joint with carbon fiber rods. I then used epoxy with micro balloons in it to reinforce it:
Top View.
Bottom.
When it was finished I cut the original tender shell so that it fit tightly against the cab backside.
A little wiring later (I made it all new), that was it:
It works much better than before in every way, and it does not look so clumsy as before. Now it fits well as a Port switcher on my layout.
It took 5 hours of work, but it was not much else I could have done instead .....
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