The (Unfinished) Arnold-Minitrix Shay

Part 2 of 3: Shell

Given the awkwardly-proportioned mechanism, bashing something together that resembled some sort of Shay might prove to be a tall order. Fortunately, Shays come in a myriad of shapes and sizes, with all manner of variations and customizations, so there was no need to count rivets; just shaping the basic features would be good enough.

Although I was already scratchbuilding all of my structures back in the 70s when I made the Shay, I was not yet sufficiently confident in my abilities to tackle a locomotive, so I started with an existing steam engine. Back then it was a big deal for me to sacrifice a locomotive, but my Arnold Rapido 0-6-0 switcher (sold under the Revell name) was not meeting expectations of appearance or performance, which had already been set much higher by my Minitrix 0-6-0. So ultimately it wasn't too difficult to make the decision.

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Construction began with the boiler. Because the Arnold boiler was straight, fitting it around the motor was tricky. After removing most of the cast-on detail parts, I trimmed the boiler in small increments until it precisely fit over the mechanism—a lengthy trial-and error process. Next, I cut the cab away from the old switcher frame and trimmed it to fit over the motor; I made a new cab front from sheet styrene to fill in the spaces around the motor, and cut away clearance for the cylinders.

The tender was created using an unusual technique. First, I sliced the coal load off the top and the frame off the bottom. After careful measurement, I determined the tender's finished length, added half of its width, then cut. I filed notches into the inner surfaces on each side where the tender's corners would be, then heated the notched areas with a soldering iron and bent the sides to meet at the center in the back. The result was a strong, one-piece tender shell.

With the three main shell parts ready, I began to fabricate the connective tissue that held everything together. For the cylinder side I made the frame sections and convoluted cylinder enclosure from sheet styrene, shaped to fit around the protruding mechanism parts. For the other side I made a frame from sheet styrene and Plastruct I-beam. After positioning all of the primary parts in place right on the mechanism, I began bonding them together one by one so as to maintain a perfect drop-on fit.

The remainder of the shell construction involved detailing. The cylinder assembly was originally cobbled together from styrene scraps; about a decade later it was replaced with a metal casting from a long-forgotten source (and looks to be a bootleg of the Joe Works Shay cylinders). Actually, I used two castings, which I cut and pasted together to make a three-cylinder version. The air pump is also a metal casting from the same source. The pilots are strip wood, with styrene steps; the rest of the detailing is just pieces of wire, plus a wood pile made from slices of tree stem attached to the chassis instead of the shell.

From the outset I knew that I'd be incapable of creating a functional drive train, so that was the point at which construction stopped. I'd planned on making a dummy drive train, but that never materialized. Still, I brought it along to the RailFun '76 NMRA convention in Chicago where, even unfinished, it got quite a bit of attention—not surprisingly, as back then there may have been only three or four N scale Shays in the world.

Curiously, I never took any good photographs of No. 6 when it ran on the WR&N I; it can only be spotted lurking as shadowy blobs in the two photos at right (click to see the original images). Probably this was because it wasn't finished. No matter; Part 3 provides an unflinching look at my little Frankenshay, warts and all.

Continue to Part 3
Return to Part 1
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