The Home Machinist!

Harlock,

I think I understand where you are coming from on this. At your original statement, I immeadeatly thought of the Hillcrest #1 24 ton Shay, the Westside #3 Heisler, and the Colo. & NW class C Climax. All of these were converted at least once to a different gauge, the Shay at least more than once. The task for each was not that much different: Change the axles, bolsters, end cross ties, spring planks, etc.. The Shay, as Curtis alluded to, would have the manifold casting changed that the cylinders bolted up to, which would change the angle of the power unit to align with the truck line shafts. Truck wise there is not that much difference between the designs to change the gauge.

However, if you are commenting that it would be the easiest just to roll another set of trucks under a model, Gordon Corwin did that on the Shay he built. He had a pair of trucks for 7.5" gauge, and a set for 4.75" gauge. I never checked, but I suspect the crank center line was between the center lines of the two line shaft center lines.

The Class A Climax was built to operate on 24" gauge up to 8' gauge, with all the others in between. With different sets of trucks, you could run the same 2.5" scale loco on tracks ranging from 4.75" to 20" gauge, and still be prototypical!

Regards,

Doug

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Building a 70 ton Willamette in 1.6"
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Thanks for all the information guys!

On the plans, the Shay engine is tilted in 5 degrees. This places the crankshaft 35mm from the frame.

I haven't done the calculations yet, but if I can build the locomotive with narrow gauge trucks by titling the engine out, I might do it.
I don't want to change the boiler size, so if I can make it work for NG, great. Otherwise I'll build for F scale std gauge.

My immediate goal is to build the engine only. It will make a nice display piece on it's own.

I've followed Ed Hume's progress on his locomotives for years. He does excellent work. His work proved to me that Kozo's designs
could be scaled down and still run.

Dan Rowe, who has been drawing up the Class A Shay being serialized in Steam in the Garden magazine, has good access to and a working knowlege of the Lima Locomotive Works drawings.

For most basic sizes of Shay, there is a drawing called an "end supplement" that gives the various angles and boiler offsets for the different gauges. SitG issue #113 (Sept-Oct 2010) had the end supplement drawings for 2', 3', and Std for Lima Plan 1553. Issue #95 (Sept-Oct 2007) has an extensive discussion of regauging, and has the end supplement drawings for Plan 1895. These are all 15-18 ton Shays.

Steve

Thanks Steve.

Here is a comparison of narrow gauge vs std gauge wheelsets.
I'm posting this mainly to make sure I know how to attach pictures.

Hey, looks like it worked!

I'll post some more CAD work, as well as shop work, as I make progress.

Regarding the truck placement underneath the shay... a larger NG shay SHOULD look like it's about to topple over.
If you look carefully, the boiler is leaning way over the fireman's side rail on both locomotives.

I see that you are moving the drivers in to regauge the Kozo Shay. This was the simpler way to regauge a Shay and several Shays were factory equiped for dual gauge using the method. The engine stays at the same angle and trucks are not altered. To make this work a spacer is needed behind the big gear and the axle was steped so the wheel fit was larger than normal. This step keeps the left and right axle bearings in place.

Dan Rowe

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Shaylocodan

Mike Kozo's first Shay was built using the special prints made for the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. These are in Dan Ranger's book "The Pacific Coast Shay". This is fairly complete set of prints for Shop Number 450. This is the old style engine with seperate cylinder castings.

The New Shay has a crank case bracket which replaced the old cylinders in the 1905-1910 time frame.

Dan

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Shaylocodan

Well, I'm glad to hear that my method of re- gauging the shay should work.
I wanted to narrow the trucks, but that would involve redesigning the entire locomotive.

Another option I had was to re scale to 1:32, but that would be just too small to work with.
As it is, scaling to 1:20 will make the the steam ports and check valves a real challenge.

Here's a shot of the truck with the narrow gauge wheel sets installed.

Hi guys,

I discovered this thread today.

I am currently working on a shay in this scale and posting progress photos on flickr in the set
http://www.flickr.com/photos/edhume3/sets/72157614192042835/with/6793358220/
I am revising the basic dimensions of Kozo's plan - tilting the motor by 5 degrees, resizing the boiler diameter to 86/32 inches, and shifting the positions to make the motor line up with the truck drive shafts. I also intend to mount the lubricator on the frame and not in the front truck. Here is a drawing of the concept from the flickr set:

Shay Concept B86 T5 by edhume3, on Flickr
Shay Concept Side View

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Regards,

Ed Hume