Has anyone tried doing this? Or… better yet, has anyone had any success in doing this??? I’m hoping to switch over to HOn3, and whether or not I sell my Bachmann shay depends on whether or not it can be converted to HOn3. Thanks!
You might connect with Dave at NWSL as he is selling HOn3 wheels for the Bachmann GE 70 ton loco.
http://shop.osorail.com/product.sc?categoryId=37&productId=875
He might go this route if there are enough request. He is now selling replacemnet gears to replace cracked plastic gears on the HO Shay and looking into making replacement gears for the ON30 Shay and Climax cracked gears. He has a sign up for email notifications when he has news of his products. It is better than speculation in the forums.
http://shop.osorail.com/product.sc?categoryId=14&productId=874
Rich
I’m not personally familiar with the Bachmann Shay, but I do have experience with both the Roundhouse and Keystone Shays. Both the Roundhouse and Keystone were made in both HO and HOn3 versions, but there were only minor differences besides wheel gauge and truck bolsters between the versions.
Biggest issue besides the technical is that the Bachmann is a model of a large Shay prototype. It would be towards the extreme for narrow gauge. Width of the frame will require greater than NMRA HOn3 horizontal clearances - which are already on the tight side for larger narrow gauge prototypes. I’m not sure how the Bachmann Shay would fare for vertical clearances. Also, if the frame and boiler are kept intact, the Shay engine ends up a distance outside of the new location for the line shafts. The line shafts and universals are no longer close to straight when on straight track, but slant inward from the engine to the trucks. This happens on any Shay that is converted from standard to narrow gauge (some prototypes were, too) but becomes more obvious with such a large boiler and frame.
From the technical side, the Roundhouse Shay had quite a narrow inside dimension for the truck frames so that they could be used with just a few modifications for both gauges. The inside frames on the Bachmann trucks will have to be narrowed enough to clear wheels spaced at 3ft. Truck bolsters will have to be replaced with new parts. If you keep the third truck on the Bachmann HOn3 conversion, you may have to adjust/alter the drawbar for the tender to align pulling and pushing forces. Remember, you have 2 mechanical connections to the tender - the lineshafts and the drawbar. One is off-center and the other isn’t. Yet one can’t cause the other to jam going around curves or transitioning to grades.
I’m not saying it the conversion can’t be done. Rather, I’m bringing up issues that will have to be dealt with to make the conversion successf