in between decisions

[jacq01]

  As I can't make up my mind on the large  cut-off saw at the end of the main roller street and the refuse channels at the trimmer and slasher saws, I had to turn away my attention to something else.
  My wife has a very good sense of this type of mental states so directly organised all sort of rebuilding activities in the house. This is keeping me busy in the day time ( when she is awake ) but boy oh the nightly hours.
  I decided to do some small projects. These things need to be done anyway and will only have success when I am in the mood.

  One of these projects is a larger cabin for my B-mann shay, brakes, airtank, airpump, new generator, wood fuel fence and other extra details ( NO antlers or chains)   The cabin was built up from basswood lumber, details still to be added.
  The Terrapin Narrow Gauge Society offered the best details with the shay's of Jerry Kitts and Tom Frank. Thank you my friends.

 

   The conversion progress of 1 night.

  When searching for material I found back my Mallet, sitting under a pile of magazines in a drawer.

  This is a bit more work than one night, as I have, like Marc, no real skills with soldering. I can do some without the parts falling off and have done some small SMD led's but thats all. Presently I am building up confidence to tackle the valve gear  of 4 (!!!!) wheels.
 




  And here an idea how small that little O&K mallet is, sitting next to the Shay.

 

 

  I hope to get some advice particullary on the basic painting AFTER the innitial built up and ( dreaded) disassembly.. I am one of these guys who are left with gears in hand after reassembling a clock, which is running despite the part(s) in hand.

  Jacq
 

[marc_reusser]

Jacq,

Really looking forward to this thread, and seeing what you do with these locos. The O&K is one of my favorite locos.

No worries about left-over parts......actual running trains is over-rated........I haven't built anything that operates, and feel perfectly happy .

Just for fun, and maybe some inspiration (and since these are the only pics I happened to have on the Laptop I'm working on) I couldn't find antlers and chains, but I did find cables and a rickety cab for you  (These are from the Brookings Lumber Co. in California. they were a 36"-GA operation. The Loco is one of their two Shays, the log cars are Russell).

[marc_reusser]

M

[marc_reusser]

M

[marc_reusser]

M

[TRAINS1941]

Jacq

Should be a great thread to follow.

Marc

Thanks for taking the dust off some of the pictures and showing them.

Jerry

[RoughboyModelworks]

Jacq:

That O & K is a cool loco - I'm looking forward to see how you progress with it and am gratified that there won't be any antlers or chains, though I would never expect that from you at any time. As far as having bits left over and the clock still runs, my grandfather was a clock maker and used to be proud of the fact that he could put a clock or watch back together with various bits left over and it would still run, so there's something to be said for that ability...

Paul

[jacq01]

  I've been fiddling with the driveline of the mallet. I assembled all according to the instructions but was very dissappointed about the running quality.
 
  The motor drives via a plastic geartrain and 2 plastic wormwheels in the rear ( high pressure) unit and via a cardan drive 2 plastic wormwheels in the front ( low pressure) unit the gears on all the axles.  Without the valve gear and con rods the loco is not running as I want. The teeth of the gears are extremely fine and easily damaged. This will not survive the exhibition circuit.  I shopped around for alternatives for the driveline parts, but nothing comes close.

Looking for an alternative I decided to take out the driveline and check the free running ability of the loco. I fitted bearing bushes on the axles
for the bearing slots and tested the free rolling with boiler/cab/parts added. Very good performance, the driveline and allignment of driveline bearings are the main problem.

I decided to leave the driveline out and put a bull-ant drive unit in the tender. This motor drive is very wel constructed and is manufactured by Hollywood Foundry Railway Products  http://www.hollywoodfoundry.com/ with the correct axle spacing and spoked wheels.
The complet drive unit fits nicely in the tender, together with the decoder. Current pick up will improve by fitting a collector strip on the front isolated wheels. It is now also possible to put a lamp in the frontlight.
I hope the unit will arrive next week when I am back from the exhibition in Sedan.

For the shay I am looking for a double acting airpump and a well detailed generator.

Sorry no photo's as my camera is with Nikon for maintenance.

Jacq

[John McGuyer]

Gee! I thought I would never make suggestions to you rather than my learning from you. On soldering two things: First, see if you can get a tub of Kester acid soldering paste. It is cheap and you can put the flux exactly where you want with a toothpick. Lot easier than the liquid stuff. I get it from Rutland Tool, but don't know in your area. Second, try to trade all of your old antlers and chains for a resistance soldering set-up. Don't go with the 100W. It isn't big enough for what we do. 250W minimum. I use both the probe and tweezer set-up depending on what I'm doing.

John