I discovered that my Roundhouse 2 truck shay has two non-functioning axles - the gears on them are spinning freely, so I have only one axle in each truck that is actually working. I’ve tried contacting Roundhouse withoput success (I actually kept the instruction sheet[:). ) Does anyone know what happened to Roundhouse? Is there a way to remove the grease on the exisiting axles and then fasten the gears in place so they’ll work as designed? Is there a source of replacement parts?
Any suggestions or info would be greatly appreciated.
HFred
Roundhouse/Model Die Casting was purchased by Horizon Hobbies of Chicago. They are no longer a separate company. Some of their models are coming out as Athearn models, which was also purchased by Horizon. Some are coming out as Roundhouse models. No word yet on their steam engines, the Shays included.
I don’t think anyone has indicated that Horizon/Athearn has made their stock of parts available yet.
I too have a Roundhouse Shay and I think it may be doing the same. But I also have a Bachmann 3-truck Shay and it is so fine that I’ve more or less abandoned the Shay. It takes a lot of work to get it working well, something that I am not interested in at this time.
Bob Boudreau
I never owned a roundhouse shay, but I have been really impressed with the Bachmann. I own two, and when one off them stopped working, I sent it in and Bachmann replaced it with no questions asked. Haven’t ever had any problems with Bachmanns customer service.
I contacted Athearn Customer Service: FAX 310-763-7449, told them my Shay part that was missing along with part number and received new parts in about 2 wks free of charge. If you need anymore info e-mail me.
Hope this helps, Bob
Another good fixe would be NWSL, they should have the gears for them and a bit better quaulity too. I have a couple of MDC shays and it took me awhile to build them and about 2 weeks to get the bugs out of them, both have been repowered and geared using NWSL parts, they both run as smooth as silk now. Let me see if I can dig up the conversion numbers, and I will get back to you.
Not to hijack the thread but with all these Shay owners here, a quick question. A guy at the LHS says the Bachman Shay is an all wheel drive.
Somewhere else I thought I had heard that they instead used a worm gear for the drive, with the non-driven wheels and axles then being dragged along as the locomotive moved.
Which way is it? The grade here is steep enough that all wheel drive may make a big difference.
The guy at your LHS is right, jeffers_mz. The Bachman Shay powers all the wheels thru the drive line on the right hand side, just like a real Shay. The MDC Shay uses a partially concealed drive line down the centerline of the loco which I thought drove worm gears to power all axles, but maybe not. The drive mechanism on the side is then driven by the bevel gears on the wheels for effect only.
I have an unassembled MDC Shay kit myself. I don’t know if I’ll attempt to build it in the future or just get another sweet-runnin’ Bachman unit.
Thanks, Vampire.
The MDC shay kits have 2 hidden center drive shafts that are under the frame, you can see them if you look for them while it is running. The gear box has 3 gears in it and is hidden in the firebox and the motor is in the coal bunker. Top speed at 12v for these is about 20 to 25 MPH, which is about all a shay could do anyway. The side rode drive on a MDC shay has to be timed so it works right, in other words it is a visual thing and does turn as the 3 piston rods go up and down. This road assembly is hard to put together and time, lots of small parts and allot of filing off flash. The older kits run pretty good, after you tuned them, but were very loud at higher speeds. Kind of like a dremel power tool that was worn out. MDC loco kits are fun to build, but you had to take your time in building them and do allot of tuning afterwords. I have not picked up the 3 truck Spectrum Shay yet, but put a bug in my wifes ear about what to get me for Christmas.
As for the wheels slipping on the gears, well these gears do just like the P2K GP loco gears for some reason, don’t know whay though.
I have two round house shays that I built,but have put quite a bit of time in tuneing them.I added better wripers on the wheels,installed can motorsW/Flywheels.All wheels drive.I do have an extria set of wheels if you need them.The worst part of building these shays is building the drive shafts,way small peaces UGH!!!Mine run fine but are nosiey.
JIM