I spent the better part of the day yesterday looking for photos of wood burning locomotives to try and get a glimpse of how the wood loads were stacked. While looking at Steam In The Woods (a cool logging photo website at http://www.steaminthewoods.com ) I came across this photo of a 3 Ft Gauge Shay (sn-341), the “Achilles” operated by H. Kalbach & Son. While not exactly the same it shares many of the same details as the Accucraft open cab version.
Heres the Accucraft model
Jon
Ya know Jon…the Mich Cal Deuce started out looking very similar…just a lot of shoppings caused her to look the way she does…
Jon,
That looks like a great prototype to me. Enclose the wood rack and shorten the cab roof and the profile would be a lot closer. If the roof is as difficult as the other shays, shortening it will not be a problem as they are in the way a whole lot of the time.
Great find!!!
Ric - I think your thoughts might have just given me an idea. I’m struggling with hiding the RC components I’m installing and already have the water tank off the engine. I might just store the original tank and build up a tank / wood rack from styrene that would be high enough to enclose the R/C components.
I’d rather make it from brass so as not to be worried about heat, but I don’t have any metal working skills to speak of.
Jon
What a beautiful prototype! Seeing it onboard the standard gauge flat car is neat, you can really get a good idea of just how dinky it was.
I found this one too, but it’s a placeholder image, not sure exactly what it is.
(http://www.lscdata.com/users/jrad/_forumfiles/cn-00.jpg)
JR
Jon,
Deep in the heart of East Texas there was an exact shay except standard gauge. If you like I can send a scanned copy, but you would have to send me an email. I also have an Accucraft model, its great.
Rich Schiffman
[email protected]
Really neat. Thanks for posting.
Good railroadin’, . . .
Here’s another one. This one even has the proper steam dome. CN-129
(http://www.lscdata.com/users/jrad/_forumfiles/sn-0129-CJ.jpg)
Notice the figure and the Johnson Bar. Accucraft’s bar isn’t too far off (except for the bracket). Sorry the pic is so small. That’s all I could find on this one.
Hello all,
I think that shay was used on a road construction project, I have read that somewhere, I did a lot of research on small class A's before starting a live steam 1 1/2" scale shay.
I settled on the Mich-Cal Duce, some day when the Army gets done with me I would like to complete that project only 10 years to retirement!!
smokeboxWelcome aboard, Robert. You’ve found the land of the tall tale. Bart is in charge of the coffee pot. But if you need something a little stronger then Fr. Fred will fix you up with some holy water. And pardon those old retired Navy Chiefs. They are about useless unless you want a really TALL story. 
Hey Warren, I thought you call those TALL stories YARNS?
Some places, but not in front of a Navy Chief. They are sensitive about their manhood and might mistake the yarn for knitting.
That occurred to me as soon as I clicked “submit”, it still fits, doesn’t it? Knitting their own caps, socks, underwear etc.?