A TALE OF TWO SHAYS
Like nearly every model
railroader who models in On30* see below
(and a lot
who don't), I bought two of the Bachmann On30 Shay locomotives -
shown above. These beautiful locomotives have helped to revive this
premier scale, and have enhanced the modelling of logging, where these
diminutive locomotives proved their worth.
* For those of you visiting this site and who are not model railroaders and do not know what "On30" means, see What is Narrow Gauge by clicking the link.
While the Bachmann model is excellent, my two were the same as all the other Shays that were bought. What I wanted to do was to individualize mine. The two prototype shays that I had always admired were the Michigan Californian Lumber Company's Shay #2 ( commonly known as the Mich/Cal #2 ) and the much earlier open cab version of the two truck Shay.
THE OPEN CAB SHAY
The
open cab Shay was made easier to convert from the Bachmann
Shay
by "Backwood Miniatures" of England, who brought
out a brass and white-metal castings detailing and conversion kit. It was
just a matter of following the instructions to produce an excellent
version of this locomotive. Opposite
is a photo of the completed open cab before it was painted. The water tank
is from the Bachmann Shay, but has the top flared edging removed, and
extension to the water filler pipe and the brass retaining fence added.
The finished locomotive, with it's distinctive open cab, large diamond smoke stack and big headlight can be seen in the photographs below
THE MICH/CAL #2 SHAY
The Mich/Cal #2 conversion was a little bit more difficult. There was no helpful commercial conversion kits here. My only option was to modify the locomotive by discarding parts of the Shay such as the cab, coal and water bunker and smoke stack that did not match the Mich/Cal #2 and scratch build the parts I needed.
First I needed a good
set of reference plans. These came from pages 44 & 45 of the
March/April 1979 issue of the "Short Line
& Narrow Gauge Gazette". These excellent plans were
drawn by Al Armitage and were all I would need to do this conversion. The
most difficult problem to solve was where to hide the DDC sound chip, its
speaker and all the wires that are involved. I was able to hide these in
the open cab shay by angling them across the water bunker - it was a very
tight fit and I had to cut away some of the top of the tank to make it
fit. The only available place in this model was the oil and water tanks. I
placed the DDC sound chip on the plans to find it would just fit by
angling it from the bottom rear
of the water tank up to the top front of the oil tank, with the speaker
facing down on the bottom front of the water tank, and with the wires
shoved as best I could. The inner formwork for the two tanks was built
from 15 thou styrene with 5 thou styrene wrapped around. Holes were left in these two
tanks to allow the DDC sound chip to be slipped in when they were
completed. The two tanks, shown opposite, are before the 5 thou styrene final warp
was attached . Both are up side down to show the
various holes required to allow the DDC 
sound chip and speaker to be
placed.
The cab was built from the plans using 5 and 15 thou styrene sheet as well as various sizes of styrene tubing. The finished result of the cab and tanks can be seen opposite, just before they were painted and lettered.
To complete the conversion, the bottom two thirds of a spare smoke stack from the "Backwood Miniatures" kit was perfect for the #2. I added a scratch built spark arrestor made from fine brass mesh rolled around a styrene tube and soldered to form a tube.
Both locomotives have two engine crew, air compressors and air tanks added to complete the conversions.
Below are plans for the model drawn on a CAD program
