Nice pile of logs! They do seem a bit big, but one must consider the average size of a Shay in context. And since Shays were used in forestry, they cut their own fuel by hand. Though they must be a tight fit inside that little firebox! Maybe the fireman had a good axe to split them some more in case they couldn't fit through the firebox doors. If I were the engineer, I'd duck... This is a really fantastic thread. Some fine work you're doing there.
It is done! I started this thread on March 18th, and now, August 31st, I did the final videos of this Shay running. This first video is of the Shay running at slow speed, and just showing off the sound. I was able to get a LokSound 5 Nano inside, with the ESU 50321 speaker and enclosure (using all of the extensions). It's a 11x15mm speaker. I was going to make my own speaker enclosure, but all I had were 8x12 and 9x16 speakers from Digikey. Turns out that the ESU 11x15 speaker and enclosure were the perfect fit for the amount of space available in back of the bunker. I also stuffed a a TCS KA-N1 keep alive in there. So these are meant for N scale, but it's fine here, it won't "keep alive" more than a fraction of a second, but that's more than enough to stop the sound decoder from resetting on dirty track. I'm a bit amazed at how slow I can make it go. I mean at speed step 1, it's not tie-per-second, geeze, it takes more than a second to reach the next tie . I put down a 6 inch ruler next to the track and timed it from the pilot crossing zero, to crossing six. Took a while, but the online calculator told me that is was going at 0.31 mph. At full speed, it's roughly 12 mph. I only timed it once at speed and wasn't too attentive to being super accurate - I don't think I'll be running it much more than half speed anyway. In terms of gear noise, it got much better once I used 102 Labelle on the gear box and the truck worm gears, it got rid of a lot of the rattling and buzzing sound. Used 107 everywhere else. However there's still something of a buzzing sound once I reach about speed step 10-12 of 28. It's not terrible though, and doesn't drown out the speaker noise. I suppose running on bare styrofoam doesn't help, but as I said earlier, I don't have an actual HO layout (yet ) Second video is a poorly shot video showing the Shay running up to full speed. My cellphone speaker isn't the greatest at picking up the sound quite right, but oh well. Maybe I should have removed the phone case, and made sure my fingers were not hiding the mic hole - I'm no videographer and don't want to be! But no matter, I think you can judge by comparing the gear noise vs the speaker noise. I mostly adjusted the sound volumes and the everything else on the ESU sound file, the amount of light dimming etc. Did absolutely no changes to the default motor settings, it runs perfect as it is. But the one thing I'm not sure how to adjust is the chuff rate. I know how to adjust it using the Lokprogrammer, but I don't know what to synchronize with. There are three cylinders, should I try to have a chuff each time once time the rod is fully up or down, or both, or whatever? I tried looking at videos of Shays on Youtube, but they tend to all be running too quickly to figure it out. I don't think it entirely matters anyway, it's more of curiosity.
Thank you everyone for the kind words! I'm super happy with how this turned out! Now I'm doing a bit of informal testing for planning a small shelf layout. I have very little space for anything HO (my N scale takes up much of my available space), but I can maybe make a 18-24" deep x 7' long shelf just for this. I've tried seeing what I can get away with in terms of grades... not so bad.... I used an inclinometer on my cellphone and measured the slope at 6%. it can push three boxcars up without slipping (two with plastic wheels, one with metal), and the curves are 18" radius. Total weight of the three boxcars is 280 grams. If I put a fourth boxcar, it slips and can't make it up the grade. I tried 8% and that can't make it up either. Funny enough, I tried just laying down some straight flex track, but the track was more slippery being brand new - no improvement (in fact the train was sliding down the hill a bit if I gave it the barest nudge). I used a track eraser on the flex track and after that I was able to push the three boxcars up 7%. Again, four was too much even at 6%. (by the way, that was speed step one with "Load" enabled on the ESU decoder, makes the chuffs bark louder)
Wow! Wow! Wow! Not only is it a beauty, it's a well-tuned machine at that. 1/3 scale mph is fantastic. And the smoothness of the drive as it creeps along. I can only say bravo, congratulations, mission accomplished with flying colors and a job well done. It's been fun and educational following this thread.
So what's next? I've got several rolling stock kits for the Shay that I need to build that I've accumulated over the past six months or so... We've got a total of 14 log cars (I never intended to have this many, but one package was thrown in free on an order because it didn't have any trucks), a Barnhart loader, and a logging caboose that looks very very similar to the caboose that appears in my Fossmill logging book. Of course I still have a second MDC Shay, this time with three trucks, but this one I will wait a bit. I just spent months on a Shay, time for something a bit different (somwehat). And the Accurail Fowler boxcars are a great match for the boxcars used to haul the finished wood out of Fossmill. Except of course Fossmill was on the CNR line, but since all my rolling stock and steam engines in HO are CPR, well, I'll freelance it I've got a lot of fun stuff here for the upcoming winter, and that's only if I continue to ignore my N scale layout down here in the basement. The original plan was to get back to N scale for a bit after the Shay, but someone kindly sent me a box of HO stuff, and there's something I just cannot ignore for long... I'm starting a new thread for this!
