Received the CWP ‘1 spot’ Atlas Class-B Shay from Trainworld (they are great to deal with, but not too chatty on the phone!) today from the ‘men in brown’. It arrived packed to survived a drop. After an extensive search through the packing material, I found the Atlas box in perfect shape.
I have to say this little jewel has a certain WOW factor when you open the lid. The detail is quite extraordinary. Time to put it on the test track for a couple of to and fros!
The gears moving on something so tiny is a sight to see. God forbid the drive train should ever come apart, the parts are just TINY! It ran smoothly and low speed performance was good.
Atlas deserves a pat on the back for creating this new shay. I think you will be pleased with this one.
A word of advice, don’t test it’s high speed performance. The real Shay was a slow speed loco, and the tiny jewel-like movement on the model probably won’t like being cranked up past slow any more than the prototype did.
Though I don’t model in N scale, I saw the Atlas Shay at the last Roseville train show, and I was REALLY impressed! Talk about busy little gears on the guy–it was really getting up and going on the logging display. You’re right about the slow speed, it could really creep along, though the top speed was somewhere just right of a TGV. But I’m glad that Atlas came out with one for N scale, it’s about time it happened. Enjoy it, it’s sure a cute little devil!
Tom [^][^][^]
It does strike me as very fragile. Nothing has broken and it would be nice to keep it that way. I’ve heard that the prototype only did about 12mph top speed. I’ll keep this one running slow for sure. If it ever “threw a rod” it would have to go back to Atlas since I do not have an electron microscope at my disposal for repair work!!!
