# Secret formula grows my Accu. Shay to GIANT size!!



## Eric M. (Jan 3, 2008)

It was the craziest thing.  We dumped this stuff in the boiler of my Accucraft Mich Cal Shay and the thing swelled up to 1:8 scale! Okay, not really-- instead a once in a lifetime opportunity came up and David, Henner and Myself are now proud owners of the first official East Devils Hill locomotive.  First, enjoy the pictures and then read on for the history of this one of a kind engine.







  First off, Henner does the honors of giving a little scale comparrison with an Accucraft Shay 


 







 









  

This is is a working duplex pump that can be used for boiler feed water or, by opening the valve on the right you can use the fire hose.  








  

The engine has working cab operated draincocks and stephenson valve gear. 








 









  

All the controls are scale and operable from inside the cab. Yoy can even ring the bell from inside the cab. 









 


Here you can see the fire hose coiled up on the running board. 







  

The East Devils Hill crew poses for a shot with their new engine. 

This locomotive was the subject of a series of articles in Live Steam magazine. It was built by the late William Harris. William later went on to write construction articles on everyone's favorite gypsy locomotive, the Falk 1, and he also wrote a series on building a donkey engine. These articles were combined into a great book titled Logging with Steam which is now out of print, however separate books on the Falk and Donkey have been released and are currently available. William was a real legend in the world of large scale steam and his articles have inspired many builders around the world. I knew the owner of the original William Harris Shay for many years and he often quipped about selling his Shay. Well that day finally came. The catch was that I had already committed to buying a pretty expensive steam engine and so I proposed to David and Henner that we buy it as a group (actually it was Henner's idea). They agreed and the first official EDH locomotive is born! We also received a maintenance stand and a riding car built by William and an additional set of archbar trucks. The locomotive is a tricky thing to fire, It is actually oil fired and requires a lot of attention but were are very proud to be the care takers of this beautiful and unique piece of scale steam history. Thanks for looking, Regards,


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## Steve Shyvers (Jan 2, 2008)

Eric, 

Congratulations to the three of you! Very impressive. Who's going to be first to make a working 1:20 version of the duplex pump and fit it to the Accucraft shay? 

Steve


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## Russell Miller (Jan 3, 2008)

Congratulations to you three! I can't think of anybody else that would be better caretakers of such a special locomotive. I can't wait to see what you guys build to put behind it. Maybe you guys could bring it up to Tilden on July 18th for the BAGRS picnic during the Mega Weekend. 
Russ


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## Dwight Ennis (Jan 2, 2008)

Wow, she's a real beauty guys!! Big time congrats! I actually plan to build one of these someday and I'll be real interested to see how the gasoline/oil combo liquid fuel system works!


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## Gary Armitstead (Jan 2, 2008)

Congratulations to you three! Beautiful engine! It looks like there are a few of us being drawn to the REALLY LARGE SCALE "darkside". Very cool.


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## Mike Reilley (Jan 2, 2008)

damn...woof....whatever


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## Steve S. (Jan 2, 2008)

Mr. Harris would be happy that you guys are so proud of his awesome Loco.


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## Chrisp (Jan 3, 2008)

Congrats guys. 4.5" gauge? Where will you run it?


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## dwegmull (Jan 2, 2008)

Posted By Chrisp on 06/08/2009 2:20 PM
Congrats guys. 4.5" gauge? Where will you run it? 


Eric is a member of Golden Gate Live Steamers in the Berkeley hills. I also happen to have a loop of 3.5" + 4.75" gauge track at my place and Henner is in the process of setting up a loop as well.


I see you are from Santa Cruz: you should come over the hill one of these Saturdays and check it out in person. You might want to carpool with Richard...


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## Chrisp (Jan 3, 2008)

Tell me the next time you will be running it and I'm there. I'll even bring a quart of motor oil for you to burn!


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## HMeinhold (Jan 2, 2008)

Steve, 
functioning pumps and even turbo generators have already been done in 1:20.3, see 

http://www.buntbahn.de/modellbau/viewtopic.php?t=8303 

http://www.buntbahn.de/modellbau/viewtopic.php?t=7545 

I am tinkering with the idea of building the turbo generator for the Shay, using the ideas from this thread or a plan from model engineer. 

Dwight, 
The previous ownerran the engine with mineral spirits, the stuff to clean brushes. It seems to be safer than the gas/diesel mix! 
Regards


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## Steve Shyvers (Jan 2, 2008)

Henner, 

I used to burn used paint thinner (mineral spirits) in my Primus stove. My impression was that the flame size and heat output were both less than with kerosene, for which the stove was designed. Do you know whether the previous owner tried kerosene in the Shay? 

Steve


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## Eric M. (Jan 3, 2008)

Hi Steve,


We had a pretty thorough discussion with the previous owner about fuel.  He is an accomplished live steam mechanic himself.  He did describe trying various liquid fuels and Kerosene was among them.  It was after a discussion that he had with a fuel engineer that he tried mineral spirits and decided that it was best.  Apparently Kerosene did not have the same "oompf" as Mineral spirits.  The mineral spirits also burns cleaner so you don't have to clean the flues as often.  He did admit that the gasoline and diesel oil mixture, that William Harris originally used, worked well but it created a tear gas like emissions and the fuel engineer advised him that it may be a tad bit too volatile rendering it dangerous.


I think we will go ahead and use mineral spirits initially, and perhaps we will experiment later.


Regards,


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## Steve Shyvers (Jan 2, 2008)

Eric, 

Admittedly the paint thinner that I used was "recycled", so may have lost a lot of its "oompf". The paint thinner had originally been purchased to clean paint and varnish out of brushes. Instead of discarding the used thinner we would save it and allow the solids to settle out of it. Then we'd decant it into a different container, use it again to clean brushes, and repeat the cycle. Somewhere in this phase of the paint thinner's reuse some of it would get used in the Primus stove. 

Steve


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## Eric M. (Jan 3, 2008)

I could see that the Mineral spirits may loose some volatile compounds in the recycling process you describe.. The other thing to consider is that the burner in this Shay operates differently than others-- like burners that use wicks for example. The firebox has an atomizer plate that gets really hot. When the liquid hits the plate it vaporizes and burns in the firebox. Apparently it sounds like an angry bumble bee when running and that is "a good sound". I'm not sure but I suspect the different properties of the different liquid fuels may make one vaporize better than the other.

Regards,


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