A "lesser" Shay.............  This may seem to be nothing out of the ordinary - but look closer! It is, of course, one of the wonderful Bachmann Shays - but it is also one of the most complex conversions I have ever made! Beautiful and no doubt accurate a model as it is, at 1:20.3 scale it towered over the rest of my engines - but it just didn't convey the "hunkered down" narrow gauge look that I wanted from a "sidewinder" - and so I set out to lower it! In a process that's far too complicated to go into in detail here, I achieved a height reduction of 3/8" at the footplate, and 5/8" at the cab eaves. This involved cutting down and completely rebuilding the power trucks, adjusting the trucks so that they swivel WITHIN the frames (this cuts the minimum negotiable track radius to about 7' ), and re-positioning the cylinder assembly higher. Each of these simply-described alterations involved a lot of tricky jiggery-pokery! The cab is cut down by 1/4" above the waist-line, and new windows fitted. The tender coal rails were removed and rebuilt as flares, which lend the model an "earlier" look, but very little else was changed. I am more than happy with the outcome, and think the look of the engine is considerably improved. For reasons that I cannot justify I have a second Shay that I'm hoping to do even more outrageous things to! |