Best Of The Overland/Wiseman brass Western Maryland Shay thread

[u18b]

pause on painting.......

I have two Shays I'm painting.   The one above is a version 2.

But when I disassembled a version 1 Shay.... which I had rebuilt earlier in this thread....

YIKES!!!!!   The support bracket which holds the power plants and the drive shafts failed AGAIN!   
This area takes a lot of stress and my previous solder joints had broken loose.
This is a catastrophic failure.

Will be posting a solution.

Here is a quick low-rez video documenting the problem.

[u18b]

So... about to paint a version 1 Shay which I had already rebuilt as described here....
And I discovered that even with extra solder, the joints broke again.

I decided I was just going to have to make this area beefier.



It may not be totally pretty, but I thought I would try soldering 5 mil brass sheet in these two spots.  The goal was to add extra support between the fire box supports and the locomotive frame (sides).   The power plant support is soldered to the bottom of the frame.



The goal was to hold the power plant more rigid and not be supported ONLY at the originally designed joints.

(BTW- this is a catastrophic failure point on these ver 1 locomotives and one of the main reasons why OMI did a recall and redesigned them.

[u18b]

5 mill brass sheet cut with scissors.




Had to angle the short end.

[u18b]

Cleaned, fluxed, and tacked in place on the short end with resistance soldering.






Added solder to the long end on the inside of the Shay frame.

Then formed the U shaped brace.



L brace (blue) is soldered in place.

Now test fitting the U brace (red).

[u18b]

All soldered in place.

It's not overly pretty.... but it is strong.

And beside, this is the underside.   You can only see it when you pick up the loco.



(will post a better photo.)

[u18b]

Better shots.

If I ever have to deal with a version 1 again, I'll do this up front.
This is a must-do improvement.






Now back to painting.....

[u18b]

There's been a significant development in this thread.
Aside from painting (which I will cover later)...

Alex had a Shay that was accidentally damaged by the painted.
A tiny bevel gear was destroyed (the brass is very soft and deforms easily with heat!).





I also destroyed one... as documented many pages back.   AND.... I had one that had a tooth which wore out and had a gouge in it.    But I had an extra gears and could replace them.  Alex does not.
And that gear is one of the parts which completely disables the loco if broken.

Wiseman is out of all significant Shay parts.

I've been working with Alex for several weeks now.    A lot of internet searching.   
I ordered a couple of gears from overseas as a longshot.   Sadly, they did not work (though one crown gear on the wheel might work- but that's a different story).

Alex finally came up with the solution to pay a watchmaker to cut new gears.   And we are in that process right now.   It is a VERY expensive process- but a rebuilt Shay is honestly worth a LOT of money too.
So it is not a great solution- but it is a solution.

These gears are TINY.



I post this because if anyone else has a Shay and you might want to obtain one or more of these gears, please let me know.
I don't have a final price, but one gear may run about $200 or maybe $300.  I won't know the final price until the dust settles.

I still had one last stock gear left, and we are using that for the pattern.

What I find amazing and disappointing, is that my gear is not perfect.
You can see that the hole looks off-center (actually, the gear teeth were not cut perfectly).   For reference- that hole is 1mm.


So since I own three Shays and a LOT of time and money invested in these, I'll probably be getting one or more gears as backups.
Shoot me a msg if you might be interested.

The goal is to repair Alex's Shay and get it running again.

[u18b]

What are the dimensions of the in service version of the road name?

Also - are the safety first signs yellow or white? On many of the WMs other late steam these were white.

I see I did not answer this previously- sorry.

Actually, I have no idea.

Since they were added by the railroad (and your input on general practice) I think I will make them white.

[u18b]

Watchmaker sent me two photos of the first sample test gear.
This thing is only 2.7mm.





I have a spare tender truck.

When I get this gear, I will CAREFULLY remove my good gear, and then install this one to see how it runs.

[Chris333]

Would love to see how the gear was made.

I wonder if it could be 3Ded and cast in brass. You might have to clean up the teeth later with emery cloth, but you could have a a ton of them to work with.

[peteski]

Would love to see how the gear was made.

I wonder if it could be 3Ded and cast in brass. You might have to clean up the teeth later with emery cloth, but you could have a a ton of them to work with.

I'm not a metallurgist, but I wonder if cast brass would be as strong as one machined from a solid rod.  That gear does not have much "meat" in the center. Casting can be porous and have microscopic voids in the metal.

[Chris333]

True, but it could be cast longer and cut/milled to length.

[u18b]

Printing is beyond my knowledge.

This gear does take a good bit of stress.  I'm also not sure how it would hold up.

The watchmaker said he does not expect this one to work (not sure why).
But he wanted to give it a try.
He made it with the tools on hand.

However, to get it better, he would have to create a new tool for his machine to cut finer.

So maybe this one will work (and would definitely keep costs down if it does).

[u18b]

He also wanted to know the measurements for the crown gear....

so I may as well post them here.

I do not own an ultra-fine/tiny micrometer like the watchmaker has.
I just have a relatively big caliper from Harbor Freight.

So I was unable to make some measure where space was tight.
In that situation, estimates can be extrapolated from the photos.

[robert3985]

I'm not a metallurgist, but I wonder if cast brass would be as strong as one machined from a solid rod.  That gear does not have much "meat" in the center. Casting can be porous and have microscopic voids in the metal.

The metal is thin on the narrow end, but plenty thick on the wide end, so the contention that it doesn't have much "meat" in the center is only for the narrow end.  The teeth themselves are plenty robust and the "meat" around the center hole gets much "beefier" quite quickly.

As for cast metal having voids and being porous, most lost-wax (investment) casting today is done with vacuum casting machines, so the metal is quite solid since the vacuum of casting doesn't allow much voiding, if any.  Any caster worth his salt and knowing basic techniques has no problem with brass being porous and full of voids.

When I was casting HO scale detail parts, using a centrifugal machine, I also didn't have any problems with porosity nor voids, and I cast a bazillion tiny parts.

Cheerio!
Bob Gilmore