Rosco’s LugNet Page
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Cass Railroad Shay #2
| | “Shay #2, a Pacific Coast Shay, was constructed in July of 1928 for the Mayo Lumber Company of Paldi, Vancouver Island, British Columbia.”
“... originally a wood burner, spent its working commercial life with four companies in British Columbia including Lake Logging Company, Cowichan Lake B.C. and Western Forest Industries, Honeymoon Bay, B.C.”
from the Cass Railroad website
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I wanted to build a Shay since I saw one in Oregon in 2001. The main problem was how to make realistic looking drive shafts that actually rotated when the train moves. This problem was made much simpler when Ben Fleskes announced his custom train wheels. So at BrickFest® PDX 2004, I purchased 12 such wheels, specially for the project.
Well, when I got home I quickly designed a very simple 10-wide bogie, but I couldn’t find any way to actually drive the wheels via the drive shafts and still be able to take sharp LEGO corners, and so other projects overtook the Shay.
But more recently I found the drive system on Reinhard “Ben” Beneke’s fake 4460. This is a very simple system of driving bogies through the point of attachment. And I finally let go the dream of being able to connect all the drive shaft segments, I doubt it is possible without modifying any parts. After those 2 discoveries, the building went quite fast, and here is the result:
A lot of inspiration for the model details came from Lewis Valentine’s Shay #5. The crankshaft arrangement, and much of the greebling atop the boiler is based on his model.
| | This is my first 10-wide locomotive, although I have dabbled in 10-wide before with my breakdown crane. The boiler is 6-wide, and offset 1 stud to the left of the frame. The tender is 9-wide, built on a 10-wide frame.
Here you see a front view, showing the offset boiler. Shays, especially larger ones, were designed this way to offset the weight of the cylinders and transmission shaft.
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| | The tender connects to the loco via an axle fitting into the hole of a Plate 3 x 2 with Hole. This is needed because the tender sits atop a single bogie which is free to rotate. So it must be connected to the loco via a single point of rotation - using magnetic connectors would allow it to swing from side to side. I used a similar technique with my earlier Garratt locomotive.
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Bogies
| | The bogies are based on the ones by Ben B, but I wasn’t happy with them being held on by just a single 12 tooth bevel gear. So I added a 4x4 turntable to each bogie. This increased the height by 1 plate, but I was much more comfortable with it :)
The drive shafts are driven from the wheels by technic gears. Using Technic 1x1 bricks, I was able to keep the bogie frame to 9 wide, and was pretty pleased with how it turned out.
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Traction
| | All 6 axles are driven, by 2 Technic geared motors. One inside the boiler drives the 2 front bogies and the crankshaft, the other in the tender drives the rear bogie. It can also be used as a push along by removing both motors. A wire connects the 2 motors, and another wire runs out the back of the tender to connect to a train motor, to get power. Note that the technic motors don’t drive as fast as a train motor, so for best performance you need to modify the “pickup” motor by either reducing it’s power, or removing it’s motor altogether.
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Detailing
| | Those that know my constructions know that I’m not big on details. But inspired by Lewis Valentine’s Shay #5, I did more detailing than usual on this loco. The greeblies on the boiler, the steam pipe. Also the inside of the cab has various levers and dials, and a flaming firebox. And I decided to put coal in the back.
The hand rails on the sides of the boiler are Evergreen 3.2mm tubing, painted with Tamiya black gloss (X-1) Acrylic model paint.
The stickers were done with Paint Shop Pro, the writing is in tan to match the tan strips. I decided that of the colours that this part comes in, tan was the best match. Thanks to Janey for her artistic expertise and the Bernhard font :)
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| | To finish, here are full side-on pics of the loco from both sides.
More pics can be found in my Brickshelf gallery.
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References
Cass Railroad Shay #2 page
Lewis Valentine’s Shay #5
Reinhard “Ben” Beneke’s fake 4460
My Brickshelf Gallery
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Site last modified November 4, 2004 Home
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