Building (and improving) the Showcase N Shay

[randgust]

OK, so first, the 'object of the game'.   The lumber company my father started to work for in 1928 was Wheeler & Dusenbury in northwest PA.  It was quite the operation, and they had two bitty Shays, two rod locomotives (2-6-0 5 has already been scratchbuilt), and a 47-ton Heisler.   And one 'bigger' Shay that seemed to be generally unloved.

The bigger Shay #6 was SN 2405 Lima 1911, a 42-tonner.   I've only ever seen two photos of it, one in service in "Allegheny Valley Logging Railroads" (Casler, 1976) and then a second photo my father took after it was essentially scrap, about 1938.  Records say it was scrapped in 1940.   The logging operations were growing so long that a Shay couldn't keep up, the rod locomotives and the Heisler were the longest lived.

So here's the prototype I'm trying to model:



Link:  http://www.randgust.com/wd6.jpg

By that time, beat.  No obvious clue as to why.   See something unusual?   There's no air reservoir, and the in-service shots show no air either.   As near as I can tell, it either had the air reservoir between the frame rails or none at all, note no air hose and link and pin pockets.   

So modeling this has been a challenge.  I backdated an Atlas 65-ton Shay, but it's still a 'big' Shay.  And it's a PITA to keep running, it sheds driveshafts, has erratic pickup, is really cool but not particularly reliable.  I was aware of the Showcase Shay, seemed too small, and having a one-truck drive and one-truck pickup, well, that didn't seem up to it, bluntly.  I have a lot of insulated frog turnouts on my modules so unless there was a way....   Didn't see it.

When I did the McCabe Nn3 module I got the bitty Nn3 kit, added a Rokuhan Z pickup truck.   Holy smokes, the performance was just amazing with that.   N one was out of production, if I could fix the N one like that Nn3 one, I'd take a shot at it.....  The Nn3 kit was just a phenomenal model when finished, with 8x8 pickup, directional headlights, dummy driveshafts.  This one ran so well that I was motivated to finish the Nn3 Ttrak module, we have winner.



Link:  http://www.randgust.com/Nn3shay21.JPG

So, after that.... back to the N idea.  Put in a standing backorder for the N one, with the drive truck... and about a month later,  got a confirm it was available.  Bang, so lets start.

[Chris333]

If it had a long thin cylinder on the opposite side, it might of had steam brakes.

https://tmrdistributing.com/presta/ho-scale-locomotives-parts/10879-10879.html
https://www.trainorders.com/discussion/read.php?10,3938617

[randgust]

Well, there's only two photos of that locomotive that ever came up, and I'm the one that supplied the photo for shaylocomotives.com.   Neither one show the left side.

So yeah, I'm guessing steam brake.  More on that later.  W&D was consistently inconsistent, stayed with link & pin on the log cars to the end, no air brakes on those, and while the 2-6-0 and the Heisler had air, the 0-6-4  didn't, this Shay doesn't look it, and everything had slotted knuckles to handle pins.

So when I got the N kit, I realized a couple things right off.  First, although you can tell they are from the same company, the Nn3 one is better 'evolved', and also, some of the parts have been changed from the instructions.   The Nn3 one had magnificently engineered MT Z short-shank couplers on the sill - premounted -, I'd never seen that done before.  Well, surprise, the N one has a big fat cast post on the sill and the 'civil war' link and pins supplied, also some cast dummy couplers with no obvious method of attachment.   Hmmmmmm.  Can I imitate that Nn3 mount?  It had a completely miniscule screw, and two stainless steel leaf springs for centering, also mounted on the sill.  Well, that's not stock.  Yikes.  I want couplers like the Nn3 one, but that won't be particularly easy to do.  A little research shows that the MT 901's are intended as a drop-in replacement for Marklin, with a coil spring BEHIND the coupler, i.e. a deep pocket.  Well.

The other thing was that the front truck and cab are now RP-printed.  Cab is magnificent.   Front truck on the Nn3 one was perfect.   This one?  So stiff the wheels wouldn't roll, so I was glad that I was going to get pitched anyway.

The final 'huh' was that the Nn3 one was obviously planning for headlights, the front of the smokebox was a separate casting, the front of the boiler had a slot for headlight wires.  Getting the LED resistor under the boiler was a squeeze but it worked, here.... one solid casting.   Oh, well, that's what drills are for.

[randgust]

Building the power truck per instructions was as easy as original.   The only 'ah-HAH moment was figuring out (as in the Nn3) one, how to wire in the front pickup truck and headlights.  There are two existing wires on the power unit going to two screwed-on 'clamps' that also hold the pickup wire.  It's reasonably easy to back off the top screw, remove the wire, solder a second wire to the first, and put it back in and screw it down.  Then route the new wire up under the mounting plate to pop it out the front so it comes out in the cab.  That lets you wire in everything.

Oh, and if you're thinking of putting a decoder in this thing, .... well, maybe the cab?  But I don't see it.

The Kato 11-105 chassis should be considered to be a collection of useful parts.   Both trucks are useful, and they easily strip down.  For this project, I used the geared truck end minus the gear housing as it had a rather easy mounting 'hole' in it.  Drilled that out .060 to clear a 00-90 screw, and filed the sideframes off as thing as I could get away with.   I cut the sideframes off the RP printed Shay front truck with an abrasive disk - DON'T TRY A SAW, they are really brittle.   The abrasive disk also was an easy way to thin them up a bit, and used Goo to mount them to the Delrin sideframe.....



link:  http://www.randgust.com/ShowShay4004.jpg

Now, note how LOW the mount is on this.   Also note that I trimmed down the pickup ears, you'll see why.

Now if you don't like those flanges, nothing is easier than taking apart a split Kato wheel and chucking it in a Dremel and filing them down.  I'm running these on C80 and Peco C55 so I have no need to do that.   May do it later on, easy to do.   

[peteski]

I think Kato 33" wheelsets available as Kato parts (932080) might have slightly lower flanges and slightly narrower tread.  I know that the 36" passenger car wheelsets do have narrower tread and low flanges, but those are likely too large for this model.

[u18b]

Getting popcorn.

Looking forward to this.

 

[randgust]

The Kato 11-105 has significantly smaller wheels than anything else out there commercially available from them, I've measured them at 27" with a 5'6" wheelbase.   My 'prototype' Shay had 29.5" wheels.   I've lost track of all the critters and custom builds I've done with these parts.  But they don't sell parts, considering that the retail price of these from a Japanese dealer is still well under $20.  I'm seeing them at around $12 at the moment pre-shipping.   

[u18b]

In my book, there is not much difference in 2 N scale inches.

3 inches is the difference between a 33" wheel and a 36" wheel and that is a little noticeable.

[Chris333]

I just realized... 42 ton Shay... Ely Thomas Lumber Co. #6... Bachmann did that in Large scale. Showcase copied it down to N scale 

[randgust]

OK, here's the real changes.



Link:http://www.randgust.com/ShowShay4002.jpg

OK, there’s an awful lot in this one shot, actually.

First, the front truck pickup strips.   I know there’s people that prefer to wire the nubs into pickups and solder, I’m not one of them.  That ‘downward force’ on end-axles is a Kato secret sauce, you do want that, even it’s more difficult to execute to push the wheels down with springing on irregular track surface.  And on this one, I need that front truck easily removable, too.  So, first, the task was to insulate the pewter frame all around with .005 Evergreen styrene, cut to fit, and secured with ACC.   Then I got some long , straight Kato pickup strips (PN X03-1663) which are the high-quality Kato stuff, and bent them around like did on the Nn3 one, and secured on the styrene with ACC.  I even insulated the INSIDE of the frame as well as the edges, we’ll be stuffing a lot of wire in there.   The soldered leads to the pickup strips are in the front, on the inside.   These will get painted black except for the portion that actually contacts the truck pickup ears.

Now, the front truck mount.  This got interesting.   I wanted the Kato truck easily removable, the tough part was resetting the front truck height to match the rear power truck height already established on the back.   I got a 2” piece of 1/16 tubing, drilled it out for 00-90 (I use .0375) and tapped it.  Then drilled the pewter frame to the OD of the brass tubing for a tight fit, and set the chassis up on track.  I could literally push the tubing down in the frame on the truck, screwed on, to precisely set the front truck height that way and secure it with ACC.  Then, finally, cut the tubing to length above the frame and grind down slightly to fit the boiler.  Had to test it with the boiler casting under load, tweak the pickups.

Next, headlights.   I simply ended up drilling a hole through the entire smokebox from right in front of the stack, about .020, to pass the Pico warm white LED wires through, you can see them sticking out of the bottom of the smokebox.   I drill and pre-mount and test the headlights in those castings before I do this, using canopy glue.   The next trick shot will be locating the LED dropping resistors.

Finally, the really tough part on this one was the couplers.  I’d done ‘normal’ MT short-box couplers on my first Shay and my Climax B, they looked huge.   The Z scale 903’s have a long box, won’t fit.   Walter Vail had designed a genius mount of a Z scale 901 in the Nn3 Shay, but this N one had a big thick pewter post front  and rear to use the MT  ‘civil war’ link and pins.  Well, that’s a non-starter.  I want to imitate what the Nn3 one had.   Not easy at all.  First problem was that cast peg, way too big.  And I need to modify the shank height, and also have some kind of removable plate on the bottom as, well, either something always get damaged or broken, face it.  In case of emergency, unbend and pull the retainer plate.
So step 1 was making bottom plates out of brass and .020 wire, drilled in the center, soldered, and drilled on the edges.   Idea was to hold this by drilling up through the post and NOT gluing it, just bend it over on the top so that it could be unbent to change out  a damaged coupler.  And on the edges so that it would not twist around, two more .020 pins in the sill.  Drill .020 down the ‘post’, and then LABORIOUSLY start with an abrasive disk, and a diamond file , and a #11 blade to cut that post down small enough that a 901 shank easily fits, and easily rotates.   True PITA, and also put a .020 styrene shim on the top because coupler height was too high.

Now, the real genius of Walter Vail was how to spring and center that 901 coupler.  There are a pair of tiny flat phosphor brass springs, split in the center, secured to the sill – with a “V” notch cut in the center edge of both of them to fit the protruding peg on the back of the coupler.  Set to the proper tension, this both closes the knuckle and re-centers it.  Walter had some tiny screws to pull this off, I had to drill and peg it with .020 wire secured with ACC on the outer edge, but it actually worked.   It takes some tweaking to set the tension just right, but darn, it worked. I wish I’d seen this trick years ago.  But its admittedly difficult.  But the short-shank Z coupler mount works here, too.

And the last trick you can’t see but is there is figuring out how to get the pickup circuit in the cab for connections – there’s a new and fairly fat hole drilled diagonally from the front firebox edge all the way through the boiler backhead to get those truck pickup wires into the cab.

And after all this, other than the coupler, everything is completely hidden in the finished model.

[dem34]

I just realized... 42 ton Shay... Ely Thomas Lumber Co. #6... Bachmann did that in Large scale. Showcase copied it down to N scale 

Making a model of this exact locomotive so following this with interest. I also had the benefit of talking to club members who were both engineers and firemen on the engine and got detailing pointers. Like how an in service shay is going to have a grease drum somewhere accessible, and that its rare for an electric headlight that replaces an Oil lamp to be anything fancier than a large can with a bulb in it, possible also using the smoke box as a ground connection.

[randgust]

Not only that, but remember logging railroads were 'selective' on safety, so the usual railroad rules of headlight use didn't necessarily apply.  It''s not just the obsolete couplers and lack of air brakes.

If you look at old photos, you'll rarely if ever see a kerosene headlight on in the daytime.  Think about it.   If there's a turbogenerator on the boiler, that's for electric lights, and yeah, the headlight 'might' be on while running.  Or not.

I've done most of my bitty stuff without headlights, mostly because they were done before the pizo-sized LED's were available that will fit in the headlights.  Finding space for a dropping resistor is sometimes a challenge.

But I've also observed that a grimy black locomotive tends to blend in to a layout even if moving, and a headlight gives it life and has a turbo on it.   I put working headlights on my Nn3 Shay, as it will be running on Ttrak shows, and without that, it's hard to even see it it is so small!

W&D 6 is a mystery.  Headlight is gone, but it 'looks like' an empty bracket on the boiler right in front of the bell for a missing turbo.   It's new enough that Lima would have given it electric headlights. The other shot of 6 is from the rear and blocking both the headlight and the turbo, no answer there either.   I like the headlights on tiny black stuff now that the micro-LED's fit.   I'm going with that, the model has a turbo on it.

It also has one of the clunkiest bell castings on it I've ever seen, that has to go.  I've got some nice GHQ ones I've saved.

[peteski]

You keep alluding to having problem finding a space for a current limiting resistor for the headlight LED. I pretty much exclusively use small surface-mount (SMD) resistors.



I usually use the 1206 size.  Sometimes I mount it on a piece of very thin PC board material, other times I can attach wires to it.



In t his example the wires are 30AWG decoder wire, but a much thinner (like 36AWG) magnet wire can be used for hookup. For low-current applications  0805 resistors could be used for even smaller footprint.

[randgust]

I've made a practice of always trying to use the resistors that come with the pre-wired Pico LED's.   So far that's always worked.

I've got quite a stash of stuff, but none of those bitty resistors.   But I can see that for some of the things I'd like to do I should probably learn more on how to get them.  And how to even read the resistance?

[peteski]

You don't  have to be an electronic whiz to have enough basic knowledge about resistors.  You don't really even have to understand the details.

White LEDs are very efficient.  The general rule when powering them from a source of 12V DC (couple of volts difference either way doesn't make much difference), you use a 1000 ohm (or 1k ohm) resistor in series with the LED.  Since that resistor is there to limit the current going through the circuit, that also controls the brightness of the LED. The less current going through, the dimmer the LED.  While 1k resistor is typical, it makes the LED glow quite bright with 12V power. That is usually good for models where a plastic "light pipe" conducts the light from the LED mounted in the model to the headlight lens.  For applications where the LED is installed in the headlight housing (especially for models of 19th or early 20th century locos where headlights weren't very bright to begin with) you can use higher value resistor to dim the LED.  Anything from 1k to 50k or even more. Good thing is that you can't blow anything up by using higher value resistors.

If you want to experiment and have good control of the LED brightens I would recommend purchasing a  kit with a range of resistor values. Those are inexpensive and available on Amazon or eBay.   You can buy kits of either standard cylindrical resistors with leads or SMD resistors. That way you can experiment with which resistor works the best for a specific model.  No calculations are needed - just try several different values on your workbench (before installing the LED in the model) and pick one that looks the best.

Then there is the power dissipation (because the resistor dissipates the electric power as heat).  Not much heat is generated but it should be considered.  Again, with 1k or higher value resistor a resistor rated 0.1W or higher will work.

The typical resistors included with the LEDs you buy are usually 1k and either 0.25 or 0.125W.  Those are rather bulky in physical size.  SMD resistors are more compact  and easier to hide in a small model.  Here is a sample chart of their dimensions and power ratings.  As you can see, the power dissipation is related to the resistors physical size.

https://www.westfloridacomponents.com/surface-mount-resistor-sizes.html

As you can see, either a 1206 (which I usually use) or even smaller 0805 resistor have sufficient power rating to be used in our LED circuits.

There really isn't that much to it, and you don't need to be limited to using the resistors included with the LEDs you buy.  You don't even have to do much math - I provided the recommended values.

Resistor value calculators are on the Internet.  Cylindrical resistors use color bands while SMD resistors use digits instead. The photo I posted earlier, the brown  (1) green (5) red (2) stripes or "152" numbers on the SMD resistors indicave a 1.5k ohm resistor.  The 4th gold band on the cylindrical resistors indicates 5% tolerance value.  THere are precision resistors which use more bands or digits to indicate the resistance, but most basic ones have 3 digits.

Here are couple of calculators:
https://resistorcolorcodecalc.com/
https://resistorcolors.org/smd-resistor.php