A couple of years hence, and my Shay is still hauling along fine with mostly graphite for lube on the exposed gears and drive line. I've found that making a slurry of the graphite with a rubbing alcohol solution makes it much nicer to apply, and helps wick it in to where it really needs to be in a lot of the situations. It also seems to work well in conjunction with more typical lubes like Labelle plastic compatible, and I can't think that having a bit of both on key lube points would be a bad thing.

Ran for about four hours today pretty heavy hauling for about two actual miles traveled, without adding any lube this run nor the previous, and all seems fine, so I'm likely up in the 25+ actual total miles running on almost exclusively graphite for the exposed surfaces. Heavy haulage this day was two Bachmann cars with couplers modified to be adapters for the string of six AMS logging skels, that are quite heavy and were the heart of the consist, with grades a little in excess of 5% for 10-12 feet on a fairly sharp curve of about 5.5' radius.

Looks like I still don't need to add any further graphite for my next run either, but pretty soon it will be time to open up the power trucks to re-lube in there, but with a Labelle oil & grease, and definitely NOT graphite!

Quote from: armorsmith on July 08, 2020, 09:42:22 AM
Stokerman, if your chassis is a more updated chassis (gen 5 or 6) then you may well be able to do that. Being as the OP did not reference what chassis he has, I chose to respond on the side of caution. An older Gen 3 chassis without modifications will not stand up to the kind of loading your heavy trains will exert.

Although this site is dated, if the OP has an earlier chassis the information on this site will be what he needs to read. http://www.girr.org/girr/

You are quite correct in doing so, of course, and yet another factor that should be considered is that of car weight, as Big Hauler cars are generally much lighter than Spectrum cars, and especially AMS cars. My Annie's performance should not be considered anything like typical for the earlier chassis configurations of the Big Hauler, so I likely should not have made that post in this thread!

My Annie, that has been modified to Battery R/C, easily pulls 8 - 10+ cars up a long 3% grade, and even around a 5+ ft radius curve on grade. I have another curve that includes a short segment of 6% grade, but is mostly 4 - 5% with the same radius and can still pull 6 - 8 cars, though it definitely slows noticeably in so doing.

I have a "Plus" that's still game for a go!

Just offering up a bit of "tongue in cheek" humor, with no disrespect intended, but also mirroring the situations we have been seeing in this sector of the hobby of late, I'd offer:

The Unicorn .... a mythical beast.

The Big "Wait" Hauler. (or maybe just "The Wait")

The Ghost of Future's Past.

or perhaps

The Seventh Coming, of the Savior of the Big Hauler.

Okay, that last one was too irreverent.

Separating the chassis from the boiler shell on the Big Haulers is not all that much of a problem, so battery packs mounted in there are still reasonably accessible. Been battery powered for a few years now without any cells failing, so at that frequency I still think the boiler shell is a good way to house the battery packs ... in the Big Haulers.

I have removed the chassis from the shell a few times over those year, just to experiment with shimming the gears to get more gear tooth mesh, as it seems Bachmann designed the gear train backwards, such that the worm is pushing the worm gear out of the way (sideways) when going forward under load making it so that the axle gear is only about 1/3rd in mesh. In reverse it pulls the gears into 100% mesh, which is nice, but should have been designed the other way around, or built with less lateral slop. Teflon split washer shims to block that lateral movement seem to help a whole lot. But I digress, and perhaps should do a separate thread covering all that.

There is a huge caveat to mounting the battery packs in the boiler shell however, and that is that several of the engines do not have boilers nearly as large as does the Big Hauler. So of necessity, the smaller boilered engines, like the 4-4-0 & 2-6-0 need to have the battery packs mounted in the tender just as Bill and other's have said. Certainly there is nothing wrong with this, even on the Big Haulers, and other larger engines as well, and just as they have said, it does make access somewhat easier!  

Have yet to lift any wheels on my tender pulling uphill around corners, but then I rarely pull more than ten cars, so maybe I haven't hit that wall yet. If I ever do, I'm sure the addition of some extra weight there will make the cure, but then we're back to why not just put the batteries in there to start with ... perhaps I'll just do that next time myself!?!?

I've replaced the original cast iron weight with two 7.2 volt 6800mAh six cell battery packs hooked in series for 14.4 volts, surrounded by some sheet lead until it just fits, so a slight increase in weight and slightly better tractive effort, using Radio Control off of the same battery packs.

A wonderful way to go in my experience!

The original 36 ton version came with an instruction booklet and video, but I don't think the later 38 ton version came with either.

I must have gotten one of the very last version 5 chassis at the $45 price, a #81095 SPC. Ordered it last Friday 1-17-20 and received it earlier this week. I now see they have about doubled in price to $79.95 from what my order went through at one week ago. Still a bargain price if you need one as far as I'm concerned, just not as good a bargain as it was last week.

Meanwhile, I continue with my efforts to learn the idiosyncrasies of these rather amazing little machines. My SPC #21 Annie, which I modified to R/C & Battery, now has some thirty or forty miles logged, and running a five car passenger consist around my test loop today for most of two hours at between 25 - 30 scale MPH with 2.5% grades, I noticed excessive wobble on my left front driver. So today I learned to tear a driver down and shimmed the axle end insert with scotch tape ..... we'll see how that holds up, but it is definitely much better for now. A 9/32 hex driver made the perfect wrench to pull the connecting rod screws!

I'm thinking that this thread should be a sticky at the top of the first page on the large scale board!

Quote from: ef57 on July 16, 2019, 02:18:51 PM
Thank you. 

In 7/8'' scale (1:13.7) the 45mm. gauge would represent 36''; in what what the English call 16mm. scale (1:19), the gauge would represent one meter (39.4'': that is the reason for the existence of such an absurd scale!).

Ah no, actually 45mm track in 7/8" scale (1:13.7) is approximately equal to 24" gauge.

Then 45mm track in F scale (1:20.3) is approximately equal to 36" gauge.

While 45mm track in G scale (1:22.5) is approximately equal to meter gauge.

Whereas the UK 16mm to the foot scale actually runs on track space 32mm apart that is approximately equal to 24" gauge.

Hope that helps!

Greg ... many thanks for the news that NWSL will still be a viable resource. I'll definitely sleep better tonight knowing that!

North West Short Lines (NWSL) is no longer an option I'm afraid. They've sadly pulled the plug on their business within just the last month or so. I was hoping that they'd sell the business to some enterprising young person because they've long been such a valuable resource, but I've heard nothing along those lines, so assume that it is a done deal and custom model railroad gearing is now at a dead end.

A bit of an update:

I have received several sets of the metal railings now and have installed a couple of cars worth, an observation car and a combine. They look great and are properly spaced to drop right in just as the Bach-man said.

However, there are a few aspects that should be considered before going forward with the installations I found. 

First, the brake wheels do not fit on the brake shaft for the baggage and coach type railing as received, and the metal castings are a bit brittle and unforgiving, so go carefully here. It is probably best to install the brake wheel before mounting the railing, and a little filing on the sides of the shaft, or a slight opening of the brake wheel hole will both work to achieve a fit. Only very little metal needs to be removed from either surface, and if you do it just right, the brake wheel will "pop" on and be able to turn, but will not easily come back off, which I think is perfect!

Second, I did not replace the 90 degree hand grabs that mount on the ends of the body itself, on either side of the door, as the replacements only have two attachment points, one on each end, while the original plastic hand grabs have two attachments along the top of the grab, and one at the bottom. Thus using the metal replacements would leave an attachment hole open behind the middle of the top run of the grab rail. I note that my one factory made coach that came with metal railings has some kind of a stand off at that intermediate attachment point, but nothing like that comes with the replacement railings. In point of fact, the plastic body mounted grab rail looks fine, and doesn't sag like the ones on the end sills do, so really doesn't need replacing from that stand point, and though slightly off of the bright color of the metal replacements, they are that way on the factory version that I have as well, so it ends up looking just the same, and better than if replaced leaving the hole showing.

I chose to use Zap-a-gap to mount my railings, and it seems to have worked fine, but I wonder if something like Shoe-Goo or a silicone caulking might not work better. Whatever you use, make sure that you square up the end sill railings and make them look to be even, before your bonding agent sets up completely, or you'll end up with something that doesn't look all that much better than the plastic you replaced.

Do remember that these metal railing pieces are a bit brittle, so don't expect to be able to bend them one way, and then bend them back, because they'll just snap if you do.

I must say, to my eye, they are well worth the price and the effort to replace the original plastic railings, on the end sills at least, and I'm quite glad I've done it!

Quote from: the Bach-man on September 14, 2018, 09:35:15 PM
Dear Stoker,
They drop right in, but I glue them in place with Dr, Mike's CA.
Have fun!
the Bach-man

Hey Bach-man

Many THANKS for the quick reply!

I'll be counting up my coaches and placing an order as soon as I get the total.

While I've got your ear ... have you any thoughts on the Shay graphite lube thread I have going nearby?