Sometime in the next year or two I am hoping to build a HO shay… I have heard about all the difficulties with MDC/Roundhouse shay’s, but I know less about the Keystone’s. I know the NWSL motoring kit for Keystone’s is hard to come buy. Anyway, here are my questions:
Building difficulty: Any difference?
Component quality: Any differnence?
Post-build running quality: Any difference (with or without remotor)?
Just wondering. I appreciate any input… I know there are some MRR articles on this, but they are before my subscription time!
Keystone kit was white metal, very crude by any standards and I never met anyone with one running (I have been around a long time in different areas of the US). They have been out of productuion forever so I doubt you could even find one.
Roundhouse was a better kit but took a fair amount of skill and tinkering to get it to run. There is a whole book on building the kit. They had some problems and NWSL made a kit to improve them somewhat. At one time, Roundhouse had some assembled for sale RTR.
Just save a lot of trouble and buy a Bachmann. They are one of the better Bachmann items and lots of people like them.
I have 3 of the MDC Shay kits and one of their assembled RTR Shays. Only one kit has been assembled, and I never could get it to go more than 6 inches without derailing because their gearing is so out of sync that the front truck always wants to climb off the rail.
I have the book on how to modify the MDC Shay kit to get it to run but never did try it because the parts would have cost almost 3 times more than the original kit. The book is entitled, “The MDC Shay Handbook” by Jeff Johnston; Oso Publishing, Arlington, Washington 98223, ISBN 0-9647521-1-5.
A Bachmann Shay is a much better deal – they run excellently, there’s nothing to assemble, and they have much more detail than the MDC or Keystone Shay. SoundTraxx even makes a sound decoder that will fit into the Bachmann Shay.
I haven’t built either of them, but I have them both in my “to do” pile - I plan to build the MDC first, and tackle the Keystone later. Some thoughts:
Even in the two truck version, the MDC Shay is a much larger engine. The stuff I found online suggests that the Keystone’s the tougher project.
The MDC Shay Handbook is an excellent guide, but it’s out of print, and very expensive. I lucked out and found one for sticker price, but I looked for six months before I found it.
The Keystone powering kits are made by NWSL, and NWSL is not currently producing them, and will probably not produce any more. The HO ones seem to be particularly scarce; MSRP was around seventy dollars, but there are a couple on Ebay right now. You can get the MDC kits from NWSL or their distributors without any problems.
Thanks for the suggestions. I know the Bachmann Shay is great, but I really want to build a Shay, not buy one. For me, that is part of the fun, as well as learning. Again, I appreciate all of your comments.
I have both to build so I cannot comment 1st hand. But my research and looking at the kits shows the following:
Keystone is a non-motorized kit. My castings do not look crude at all. You must have the NWSL motorizing kit from the beginning to substitute key parts as you build. NWSL advertised the kit as “…not for the faint of heart…” Motorizing kits are no longer in production because NWSL could not get sufficiently hard frame pieces from Keystone, and motor availability has also become a problem for NWSL. They will sell you the motorizing kit less those pieces. Reading between the lines and after a Google search, the Keystone will last a lot longer and do better if you make new frame pieces from brass or nickel silver.
The other typical wear area on the Keystone, according to my Google searches, is the crankshaft and piston rods for the Shay engine. Again, making your own replacement pieces out of something better wearing than pewter is advised.
The pewter casting makes the Keystone very heavy, and a great puller for its size (again, according to reports).
As far as the Roundhouse Shay goes, (according to the book and other construction articles) it is fairly finicky to get running well with stock gears. The gears need to
I built (or tried to) the MDC Shay when it first came out. Even sent it to my re-motoring/gearing guru. Could not get it to work right, ended up selling it at a loss.
I have never tried the Keystone one so can not comment.
Geared locomotives are finicky beasts at the best of times, if you do not have much experience with rod locomotives I would not suggest a Shay kit as something to learn from.
Keystone Locomotive Works is still in business, believe it or not. They do not have a web site, nor any retail sellers (except the Shay Locomotive Shop in Cass, WV that I know of).
Search “keystone locomotive works Pulteney, New York” in Google, and you will get their phone number. I bought a O scale New Mexico Lumber Co. log car kit, and I thought I bought a HO. I called them, and they said they could trade them out. 3 months later, I recieved a fresh new Climax log car kit.
I also got a catalog. They still sell their 44T’s, the saw mill, planning mill, the Shay, and all of their good stuff.
Thanks all for the replies. This would NOT be my first locomotive… I have built 2 previous small engines (0-6-0’s) that run well… I also have a bowser kit to make BEFORE I would build. My interest in asking this question is that I would plan to buy one in the next year and build it in the future… I like to plan ahead. Again, thanks… I appreciate all the links… these do sound like finicky beasts!.. But, the challenge sounds kind of fun to me… after I finish the layout [:)] .
I successfully built 2 of the MDC versions. They ran pretty good but sounded like coffee grinders! The NWSL upgrade kits are essential, (but they’ll still scream going down the track at 15 smph!). The trick for me was to only use one gear on each truck. To simulate the other gear I used a disc that was the diameter of the gear minus the teeth. With the gear cover on you can’t tell and it solved the syncing problem. The gears were driven by the inner wheel of each truck. It took a lot of fiddling, scraping and filing to get the piston shafts to move freely. The universals were also a pain - make sure there are no burrs anywhere. Everythink must slide or mesh smoothly.
Two other big issues are 1. left to right balance, (the boiler is off-center, so you have to load up the engineer’s side with some weight in the form of heavy metal castings like toolboxes, etc). 2. Electrical pickup, you’ll have to re-design a pickup system as the MDC design really sucks. And don’t forget, the truck parts are Delrin so most glues won’t hold, (although I did recently see an ad for a CA specifically designed for Delrin and other engineering plastics).
Also nwsl will reissue the powering kits if keystone ever supplys the missing peices that they need that came from keystone originaly, or so they said. Built the mdc shay and got it to run a a tie a min. without the book and no I am not that good a mecanics. Just bought the keystone at an auction and it dosn’t look bad, better than some of the old brass, it is much smaller and is a two cylinder instead of mdc’s three, only way to get it outside of brass. Has anyone used the superstructure of the keystone to upgrade the weight and looks of some of the realy old brass that had good works but were light and not much detail???
