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Scratchbuilding a Shay


assembly, the trucks ran fine with no gear tooth skipping.


A disaster averted and a lesson learned


Then I set about attaching the front lineshaft to the crank only to find (hor- ror of horrors!) that there wasn’t enough space between the U-joints for the slip joint.


decided to try filing the ends of the uni- versals thinner to move the U-joints farther away from each other.


(I I thought of Oliver


Hardy’s oft-repeated line in the Laurel and Hardy movies of the 1930’s: “Well, here’s another nice mess you’ve gotten me into!” The completion of the entire project rested on the engine being able to run (unlike the first Keystone Shay I built). Now what was I going to do? When all else fails, turn out the light and sleep on it. I could scratchbuild thinner universals, but if I did that with the front U-joints, for uniformity I’d also have to replace the rear ones that were okay. I thought about length- ening the truck spacing, but then I’d have to lengthen the entire frame or build a new one, which would mean a new boiler as well. The next evening I


21.


learned a long time ago restoring old cars and tractors that when a part is broken, you can’t break it any further by taking it apart and trying to fix it.) Well, that worked, after a fashion. The sliding part of the front U-joint (the one on the front truck) is round instead of square to eliminate another source of binds. It also had to be short enough to allow the front truck to pivot toward the right side of the engine. However, in making it short enough for that, it would come out of the slip joint on left curves. Fortunately, when I run the Shay on my layout, I want to see the crankshaft and connecting rods thrash- ing away, so all the curves it will run on are to the right. The lesson learned here is that I shouldn’t have shortened the spacing of the truck bolsters from 21 to 19 scale feet. (I hope that doesn’t mean that


I’ll eventually decide to


scratchbuild another one; there are oth- er CNJ engines I want to build!)


22.


Final details With the mechanism running satis- factorily, it was time to add final de- tails. I decided to fabricate the lower half of the firebox and the ash pan to hide the gearbox. I carefully took measurements and laid it out on paper. With the NWSL gearbox slightly offset toward the crankshaft, I had to leave a gap in the firebox. No problem; I had everything laid out right. When I im- pressed rivets,


however, (actually,


they’re staybolts, but in HO scale, they look kind of like rivets) on the flat stock and went to bend it to its rectan- gular shape, I discovered I had im- pressed them on the wrong side of the sheet stock, so I laid out a second one, formed it, and discovered that I had laid out the whole thing backwards! On the third try I finally got it right. Now all I had to do was figure out how to attach it to the rest of the engine and be able to remove it for disassem- bling the engine itself. (The screws holding the boiler and gearbox to the frame are covered by the firebox.) I fi-


21: This close up shows where the truss rod attaches to the frame. 22: Details on the end beam include the poling pockets and cou- pler cut lever. Also note the scratchbuilt sandbox mounted behind the fuel bunker. 23: To fit on the locomotive, Kadee No. 7 couplers were modified using No. 8 draft gear. 24: This view shows the coupler in- stalled on the loco. There is not a lot of clear- ance between the truck and coupler box.


23. 24.


78


MARCH 2014


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