O Gauge Shay locomotive: J&C Studios O Gauge Archive

Shay locomotive

jdcrawler
Joined: Apr 4, 2011
Topics: 46 Replies: 65 Topics: 46

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posted Dec 3, 2017:

This is a project that I started a long time ago and it got packed up before it was finished when we moved.

The project got started when I bought a set of Shay trucks off ebay that were for standard O-gauge track instead of narrow gauge track.
The three cylinder steam engine assembly is a kit from PSC and soldering it all together so that the crankshaft still rotated and everything else still moved was the hardest part of building this locomotive.

I ran across this while unpacking some of my train things a few weeks ago and decided to finish it.
The chassis is made out of pieces of brass stock.
The shaped roof of the cab is from a bottle of perfume that was shaped like a steam engine with some plastic pieces attached to it.
The rest of the cab is made from flat styrene pieces.
The boiler is made from pieces of PVC plumbing with the steam and sand domes, smoke stack and headlight from an old AHM Cassy Jones locomotive kit.
The oil tender is made from part of a Lionel tender and other parts from plastic truck models.

The rear truck had the gearing for powering it but I had to make up a mount for attaching an electric motor to it.
Here I am fitting the cab to the chassis.

Brass detail items are used to finish out the boiler.

By clamping a pencil in a small vice, I can mark where the holes need to be drilled in the boiler for the hand rail stanchions and they are all at the same height regardless of the boiler diameter.