Large Scale Central

My wife's old Hyde Shay

Electronics Live Steam
#1

My wife got her own engine to run at steam ups yesterday. An old Hyde Out Mountain Shay. I converted her from Sterno to alcohol firing using a flame pad for soldering copper plumbing pipe. Jim Sanders(weebee loco works)showed me this trick as he had converted a couple of his Sterno fired engines the same way. I put 4 layers of the padding in the belly fire pan and filled with alcohol to near the top. With the boiler filled to near the top of the sight glass, she ran for nearly 30 min till the fuel ran out, ending with the water near the halfway point on the glass. The side slung lubricator is unsightly, going to get with Jim about replacing it with a Roundhouse one mounted in the cab door way or relocating the stock one to somewhere better looking. Cylinders, reversing block and safety look to be Mamod items or clones of them. But unlike most Mamods, she runs really well, a slobbery puss with oil and water flinging off the crankshaft, but smooth and controlable with the RC set up that is installed, along with working lights front and rear. She is serial number 18 out of 102 produced(I am told). Trucks are heavy cast metal and sprung. She has Kayee couplers installed. Can’t wait for my railway to thaw out so I can run on the rails outdoors. Now my wife needs some small logging cars, either LGB or Hartland as the engines scale is around that size. Mike and Michele T

#2

Very interesting. Looks like it could have a large boiler? Is that all cosmetics or is a lot of that area under the “lagging” used?

Would it be possible to take some more pictures from other angles? Hard to see all the detail of the engine and drive train.

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Thanks for sharing.

#3

Boiler is quite large, the “lagging” area is actually the outer shield for the pot boiler, ducting the head around the boiler and venting out up near the domes. A variation of the Weldon fire box used on most pot boilers. The bottom of the boiler has a porkypine array of brass rods that stick out into the flame bath to assist in heating. Works well as she doesn’t seem to run out of steam, even with the cylinders running in a blurr of motion. Will take some more pics when I get home later this afternoon. Its an utterly simple engine by todays standards. She was made by Jerry Hyde in 1989 in a batch of 102 that he made. Came with RC and lights right from him. Compared to an Accucraft Shay its very crude, but also really quaint. One of the few commercialy made live steamers from the USA. The Cricket and the Creekside Forge and Foundry Baldwin(would love to find one of these) being a couple of the others made commercially here. Hyde Out Mountain Live Steam is still around, has a website. But nothing on it about the Shay or the Live Diesels he made in the past. But I have old Garden Railways magazines from the pre Kalambach era that have the ads for the Shay and Live Diesels. Mike the Aspie