Best Of The Overland/Wiseman brass Western Maryland Shay thread

[Wolf N Works]

This great information please keep going

[u18b]

This great information please keep going

Thanks.
There's a whole lot more to come as I have time.

Some topics still to come:
Adding electrical pickup
trucks- overall design
Trucks drive shaft construction
U-joint construction
crankshaft assembly

[u18b]

I made a frustrating discovery this afternoon as a follow up.



The bent cylinders looked especially off.
Upon closer inspection, I found the cylinder castings themselves were coming unsoldered.
Notice the one on the left.



So now I have to de-grease and see if I can solder that back.

[u18b]

Speaking of delicate parts....

Another part that commonly comes off is the ladders at the cab.


Here it is mounted in place.



My earlier Shay was missing the ladders.  So I had to kitbash something.   I don't remember the parts, but I think it was something like a safety cage ladder.    The little nubs on the side were perfect for holding the handrails.

I took two very thin ladders and soldered them together - except the nubs for the rails.




EDIT a year later:  Those etched ladders look FANTASTIC.   But in everyday life they are too fragile.   There is no way that they will NOT get bent.  So I eventually removed them and put the thicker stock ladders back.

[woodone]

Just add a couple more pounds of TLC !
The project is moving forward.

[u18b]

Hi folks.

The N Scale Enthusiast Magazine has asked me to submit an article on some of this info.   They think it would be helpful.

I'd like to, but in order to do justice to something like that, I'd need to include all versions- and I personally only own Wiseman/Bearden modded versions.

So.... would anybody like to loan me a Shay from
1.  The first run (with the giant gear in the rear cab truck).
2.  From the real recall.  I.E. straight from Overland with no other modifications (and not Wiseman version at all).

Many people helped me in this way on my Kumata brass book project (and yes... that project is ongoing!  I'm at about 70 pages currently).

If you could pay shipping to me, that would be icing on the cake.
I'll definitely pay shipping/insured back to you.

If you have one but would really not want to pay shipping, let me know.

PM message me.

I need to be able to carefully take the shell off so I can get some good shots of the mechanism.

Test running a short amount would be a plus- but not required.
I also might be able to diagnose any problems for you (assuming you run yours) based on my experience.

I know it's a big ask, but let me know if you can help.

If you have one but don't want to let it out of your sight AND can take publishable quality photos, let me know.   That would be a good fall-back position if I can't get a loaner. 

Photos are helpful, but as I learned from the Kumata brass project, no photo can substitute for seeing the real thing.
(I discovered this again in the last 6 months when I repaired some KMT NJCB PRR heavyweight commuter sets.  These were the first I had ever held in my hands and I noticed things I had not seen before.   Things I had missed in the photos of others.)

By the way.... even if you have a needed Shay that is damaged, it could still be helpful.

[u18b]

Time to talk about trucks.

They sometimes require work to get tuned.

Here is my final test.   Clean and with no electrical pickup, they should be pretty free rolling.

[u18b]

The trucks are pretty complex.

Let's look at the drive line first.

Here is a sideframe.   This one has been damaged by someone who did not know what he was doing.  But it's still instructive.  The shaft goes in that slot.


The most amazing thing about the shaft is that it has tiny tiny brass spacers which are soldered in place and restrict the lateral movement in order to keep the tiny gears on position on the crown gears.


Once the shaft is assembled properly, a journal cover is soldered in place.




Here is a de-greased cab truck.



There are 8 parts in that driveline!

[u18b]

Here is the front truck.   Notice it's not as tight.  The two spacers on the right side have some play in them.
I think that's why this trucks has a slight "catch" in it compared to the rear truck which is almost perfect.

If this truck performed unsatisfactorily, then I would probably move the outer/right spacer and right gear INWARD toward the journal cover. 
Which is exactly what I had to do to the tender truck.    But this rear truck is acceptable.

By the way, it was only after studying this photo that I saw the hair and fuzz just to the right of the right journal.   That has since been cleaned out.

[u18b]

Let's talk crankshaft.

Here is my newest Shay.   It has an original crankshaft assembly.


It is made of a couple of pieces (they had to get that gear on there), and it is a true crankshaft- that is, it zig zags in and out.
This allows for true piston action up and down (the bottom of the pistons are in the zigs and zags).


The problem is- this design is inherently fragile.   In my collection of parts from several kits, I have lots of broken crankshaft parts.



So here again is my new Shay crankshaft assembly and ALL the problems I've encountered.  Color coded.


Purple- we already covered the base coming unsoldered.

Blue- you can see here that the soft brass of this crankshaft is already bending at the blue arrow (the counterweights are spread apart).  I gently pinched them back in.

Red-  the middle counterweight was hitting the worm.  I had to VERY VERY carefully use a motor tool and trim the weight back away from the worm.

Green-  there are spool-looking things.  The lifters ride in there (more on lifters later).  But these castings are too narrow.  You need two lifters per cylinder- but that spool will only hold ONE.  And so you can see that I have one lifter at the green arrow.  I would have liked to squeeze another lifter in there, but the universal joint on the left and the assembly retaining wall on the right are all too tight.  I could only fit one in there (more later).  On the far right, there are two lifters soldered together which are NOT riding in a spool.  That appears the way to go.  Those spools are not helpful.

Yellow-  And the central spool was somehow uneven.  When I put a lifter on the center cylinder and then spun the crankshaft, there was a periodic horrible bind and the lifter would not stay in place.  In the end, I concluded either the spool is out of round, or the lips are not straight, or (more likely) my crankshaft is slightly bent at that spot causing the spool to not be square.  Whatever the reason, I had to sadly ditch the lifter there.

And I didn't even draw an arrow to where I had to remove excess solder out of the left side of the crankshaft gear.

Problems problems.

But now all binding problems are corrected and it runs smoothly.

With all the worm and worm gear removed, you can spin the transition gear up top and FEEL how smooth the crankshaft turns.  If there are any binds, you can feel them.    The binds won't go away when fully assembled.  They should be corrected now. 

[u18b]

And by the way... the piston moving up and down is a nice touch, but only fits the one foot rule.

You cannot see pistons moving up and down from 3 feet.

My later Wiseman Shay does not use them.
And there's a reason......

[u18b]

Wiseman rightly concluded that the crankshaft is a weak spot/potential flaw in this loco.

So he just did away with it.   My other Shay that came directly from him has no zig zag at all.
He just ran a 1.0 mm shaft straight through all the counterweight castings.
As depicted here (without the gear).


Here is my Wiseman Shay.  Straight steel shaft, no pistons moving up and down (which you can't see anyway), NO SPOOLS for the lifters, the lifters are paired, soldered and ride right on the steel shaft.



I must admit, this is a big improvement if you like running your Shay a lot- like I do.    If my crankshaft fails on my other Shay, I'll be doing this to it instead.

[u18b]

I found it interesting that in my parts, I have two different counterweight pieces. Show in this photo.



Wiseman used the one up top which is either trimmed or a new flat casting.

However, I really like the more realistic big old counterweights in the extra castings I have.  I'm guessing these were not used because their location must be precise- otherwise they may hit something.
But if I ever have to rebuild a crankshaft, I plan to use these.

By the way-- these were the castings Overland originally intended to use.  Look at the ad again.


But maybe, this was part of the reason the original run tended to fail and required a recall.

[u18b]

Lifters
(at least that's what I'm calling them.  If you look at videos of the prototype, they ride on the cankshaft and obviously ride on a cam because they move up and down a bit.  They terminate up at the cylinder head.  So, I'm assuming they are lifters that open and close valves to change pressure in the cylinders.)


My parts bag includes these.   The tiny brass casting is to be soldered onto the frame of the cylinders.  Note the little pins matching the lifter etchings.   There were two etchings which had different size base openings.  The roundish base with large opening is designed to ride on those spools.   The squarish etching opening is too small.  It appears designed to ride on the shaft itself.


My partially built Shay had the lifters installed on the right cylinder but none on the other two.   In this shot, I tried to install the left.    The middle cylinder is still lifter-less.  And you can see it's hard to work in there!


But I was dissatisfied with my first attempt on the left cylinder.    Remember, everything was so tight on that end with a spool, that I had to either use ONE lifter and lose the V-effect, or just trim the base off the other lifter.   I chose the latter.  But the result was unappealing to me.


So I re-soldered the left lifter assembly so that the cut lifter was BEHIND the good one.
This shot also shows that I kitbashed the middle lifter assembly.  First, it's impossible to get to the back pin for soldering as long at the worm and transition gear are installed.   Thus if I ever start a new assembly with one of my spare frames, then I think I'll install the worm/transition gear last.

At any rate, also remember that the spool here was defective.  So in the end, I just cut of the bottom of the lifter and soldered it in place.   Since this lifter is hidden in that slot in the base, no one will know.

[u18b]

Remember, I had another problem.  My cylinders were breaking loose from their base.  So I had to solder them back in place.


So since I needed to run just a LITTLE solder at the base, I kitbashed an old soldering iron tip- cutting it to a knife edge.


I was able to straighten the cylinders out and solder then back into position with a little more solder than the manufacturer used.   This is another point that fails in these locos since you naturally pick it up at the cylinders.  So I wanted the joint to be stronger.   It looks a little less than ideal here, but I don't think you'll be able to tell once the loco is sandblasted and painted black.