darrene
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Post by darrene on Sept 16, 2022 17:39:19 GMT
or perhaps that should be 'flavor' 
A while ago, an irresistable opportunity presented itself to acquire a 5" gauge Shay Class A loco.
I've always enjoyed the fact that so much of the mechanicals are on display on the US logging locos. They've been amongst my favourite G scale locos which I run and I find watching them in motion, oddly hypnotic.
This one has a reasonably interesting past, which I'm still trying to piece together. It was built between 1990 and 1992 by Ian D Johnson while he was living and working in Hong Kong. He was the MD of an engineering firm (according to a fantastic bit of history I found on the underneath of the cab roof, where he'd mounted his business card!). Ian worked as the maintenance superintendant at Hong Kong's Castle Peak Power Station - the boiler was constructed by a coded welder there and the loco itself is liveried as 'Castle Peak Lumber Co'. A nice touch!
Also on the buffer beam is an intriguing little plaque with 'HK SMEE' on it. This appears to refer to the Hong Kong Society of Model & Experimental Engineers. A number of ex-pats living and working on contracts out in Hong Kong formed it in the nineties and it seems to have slipped out of existence when the membership dissobled as people drifted back to the UK when Hong Kong was handed back at the end of the nineties and contracts/work for UK companies dried up.
The loco was built to plans by the Rara Avis wing of Rare Bird Model Works in California,and a full set of the original, annotated drawings came with the loco. Also included were several handbooks on the various Shay loco classes.
Whilst simple (there's no superheater) and slightly agricultral, No2 nevertheless sports some well thought out and nicely implemented touches and is well constructed: A double-acting hand pump is supplemented by a Southworth Engines duplex steam pump on the left-hand running board and sports a tiny pressure gauge on the outlet.
The lubricator outlet line also has a pressure gauge fitted and a drain on the lubricator tank itself for ease of emptying.
A functional headlamp, connected via a conduit to the 'air tank' on the right-hand running board. Removing some carefully concealed screws allows the end cap to be prised of and a couple of D cells to be inserted as the power source.
Optional water inlets for a trailing water car, a removable spark arrestor plus some useful storage lockers.
As you might expect for something that's had to travel internationally, there is a substantial transportation cage which can be removed from the wheeled cradle it sits on. Curiously, it's been built with dual gauge rails attached.
There are a few little jobs to do and I would like eventually to put with a steam gypsy winch on the front - a PM Research bottle engine would be ideal but I think my chances of finding one are going to be slim. I'm also toying with the idea of running a spare steam line with a steam siphon back to the water tank, so that it can be refilled prototypically as here;
Darren
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Post by andyhigham on Sept 16, 2022 19:09:58 GMT
Unusual that it's a 2 cylinder, most were 3 cylinder
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darrene
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Posts: 440
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Post by darrene on Sept 16, 2022 19:56:54 GMT
Unusual that it's a 2 cylinder, most were 3 cylinder That's the baby A class for you Andy the other classes were all 3 cylinder. |
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Post by steamer5 on Sept 16, 2022 23:41:41 GMT
Hi Darren,
What a great find! You are going to many hours of fun driving her!
There is a guy on the MEM forum who is a Shay expert, he’s doing a build there at the moment. Worth a look
One of the guys in my club built a B Class a long time ago. I always enjoyed watching it run.
Cheers Kerrin
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Post by Shawki Shlemon on Sept 22, 2022 8:22:42 GMT
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darrene
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Post by darrene on Sept 23, 2022 16:38:39 GMT
Fantastic Shawki
That wasn't hanging about either! I've always believed they had very good torque and articulation designed in but hadn't realised how quick they could be too!
Hoping to steam mine soon. I'm in the process of building some rolling stock for it at the moment
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Post by andyhigham on Sept 23, 2022 18:50:03 GMT
I passed my 3 cylinder Shay on to another club member who finally got it working correctly.
It is fast, probably faster than the full size
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Post by steamer5 on Sept 23, 2022 23:11:01 GMT
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darrene
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Posts: 440
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Post by darrene on Sept 24, 2022 6:20:07 GMT
Wow. That’s some nice engineering. Greg has the trinity in 7.5”!
Thanks for the link Kerrin. I hadn’t come across that before
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chrisb
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Post by chrisb on Sept 24, 2022 10:50:28 GMT
The 7 1/4 Shay of Dave Giles here in NZ is a bit of a monster. He altered the gear ratios so it has a bit more speed. I had a drive a few years ago, I felt a bit precarious as sitting in it you feel are up higher than the normal driving truck height especially if you are as tall as I am.
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darrene
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Posts: 440
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Post by darrene on Feb 1, 2023 19:00:50 GMT
I had a chance to try steaming the Shay for an hour or so at the end of last year. I only had access a short ‘down and back’ but it was helpful to get to grips with it and was my first attempt at steaming and driving a 5” gauge loco. First impressions were that the steel boiler takes a bit of time to get heat into it! I was a fairly cold day which didn’t help and my blower battery was on its last legs and died, as did the progress on the fire whilst I raced to fetch a substitute I discovered a few small weeps from fittings which were addressed. It would probably pay me to check the piston rings too as it seemed slightly reluctant to pull away in both forwards and reverse. Once it was on the move though, it responded well to the regulator. I think I probably need to look at the boiler feed - the tiny on board tank doesn’t last long, so I’m thinking to supplement it with a pumped feed from the driving truck. The builder used to drive it this way in fact. He built a driving truck (which sadly I don’t have) that used a pair of axle driven feeds from a large onboard tank, complete with valves and pressure gauges on the supply lines. I may opt for an electric solution on a driving truck I already have since it’s a twin bogie. The remote feed ports on the locos rear buffer beam are plumbed into the hand steam pump lines and so a pressurised supply of some sort would be needed anyway. Speaking of which, the steam powered duplex pump is lovely to run occasionally but seemed a pretty inefficient means of supply - not only is it pumping cold feed water in to the boiler and dropping the pressure there but is further robbing pressure by using a fair amount of steam to do so… All in all though, it was plenty of fun and went well. Hopefully now that I know it a bit better, the next run can be less hectic and more enjoyable! Darren |
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darrene
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Posts: 440
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Post by darrene on Jun 11, 2023 20:24:44 GMT
four months on and I went to check on the Shay this weekend. I was disappointed to discover I couldn't move it - the crank had stuck. I took the cylinder top caps off and found a small amount of moisture had caused the pistons to stick to the bores. I was mortified as I've been so careful with it and tried to look after it well   It's very possible that I inadvertently left the drain cocks closed after the last run. I'm still trying to learn the controls and the open/closed position doesn't seem obvious (to me at least) although in my defence, vertical cylinders with drain ports at the top were never going to be a great help. I have since managed to free the pistons and whilst the caps are off the loco, it's been suggested to me to drill and tap them for 1/4x40 maintenance ports which can be capped off in use but provide lubrication access when the loco is in storage. It seems a worthwhile modification? |
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