When I was up in Canada for the Invasion, my Shay stopped working.

I thought it was just something loose, but it turned out a bit more serious than that.

I removed the bottom cover…

Cracks…and other problems. I sent a few pictures to Dave (The Old Curmudgeon) and he said he could rebuild them.

I was instantly sold. I quickly had them back…and noticed I was lucky I got it to run at all. Dave returned the pieces…

I reassembled it today. (F- to the engineer who came up with THIS design.)

And took it out for a quick test run.

It ran great thanks to Dave’s rebuild of the trucks!

Yes, I have had the trucks replaced on mine, twice, by Bachmann.

(F- to the engineer who came up with THIS design.)

Yea, its a real robust/quality design there. (http://largescalecentral.com/externals/tinymce/plugins/emoticons/img/smiley-undecided.gif)

About 2 or 3 years ago I bought the metal trucks to upgrade mine, but I haven’t been able to schedule the shop time to tear into mine and swap the trucks.

Glad to see it back on the rails Are your still using the contacts, or did you hard wire the trucks?

Daktah John said:

Glad to see it back on the rails Are your still using the contacts, or did you hard wire the trucks?

One truck uses contacts and one is directly wired. I think a few years ago I had a problem and wired the trucks.

Thanks! I never liked the contact system. I wired around it on my 45 tonners and on my Shay.

When these started failing early, early on…one MORON on the old 1:20 e-mail list claimed there was NO problem with the Shays, and how dare I say otherwise…whereupon he modified one of my posts and sent it to Botchman trying to get me sued as HE knew everything.

That was fun.

Result was the washer kits we had developed…and from that day onward they come standard in every six screw and four screw truck, to and three truck models, and the wheels don’t just “fall off” any more and the gauge is correct and stays that way.

I have boxes full of parts that bad and even worse I have saved all these years. What has it been, over 15 years now?

The truck housing split down the end it really not worth discussing…I have had housings in 5 or more pieces when I pulled it apart.

But it’s bad enough.

My two still run on plastic trucks, repaired as needed.

TOC

As the proud new owner of a 3 truck Shay is there any advice anyone wants to give me ???

Track DC power, no sound btw.

Metal trucks…same exact guts as the plastic trucks…tie down the wire harness in the fuel bunker…keep it lubed…

Never a fan of the stupidly small plugs they liked to use (4-4-0, 2-6-0 variant, OF 2-8-0, three truck, and so forth) as the wires are too small, the plugs are a pain to work with.

On your 12" diameter railroad, leave the drawbar alone, as long as only one hole is exposed in the drawbar now.

Oh…and never lay one on a hard surface on the right side to work on it. Pushes the blowdown pipes into the top of the cylinders and jams the contacts and can make it jump around a bit running.

Observe where they are now, if they get knocked in, fit a flatblade or knife underneath and wedge them back out.

TOC

Thanks Dave, no this ain’t for the pizza. I’m planning a small layout with 6.5’ to 8’ diameter curves and equivelent LGB R3 turnouts

Dammit this is the third try editing getting this to take that second sentence!

Dave, speaking of the sound contacts on the 3 truck – mine doesn’t chuff at all. Any suggestions on the easiest way to get up in there at them?

Yea, my shay has a flaky contact, so every once in a while it misses a beat.