C & s #1
C & S #1 and I have a very long history. I met it before I knew Tom, way back in the dawn of time itself. It is a PFM Harrington shay I saw it on the shelf @ Ardvark's in Nashville, back in 1980; along with a very much larger Cherry River 3-truck monster. I tend to like the smaller lokies, and at that time my RR was tiny, consisting mainly of a 2 X 6 switching layout, which had some small shelfs sticking out of it for staging.
The Cherry river Shay was built with the traditional PFM/Uninted shay drive, with the hulking motor inhabiting the cab and the fuel bunker, and the gears on the drive wheels/line shafts had square teeth. The harrington had a very tiny moror under the fuel tank, a bizzare and complicated dive system, that left the cab wide open, allowing it to be fully detailed. It had properly beveled gears on the wheels. I wanted that Shay Badly, but it was $300.
My wife and I were newlyweds, who had just purchased a 100 year old farmhouse with no central heat, and we hadle little furnature, we had telephone wire spool tables , concrete block bookshelfs, in an otherwise empty huge house. Getting $300 budgeted for a locomotive seemed unlikely, until my wife fell in love.
Before she became a nurse, Jennifer was an insurance adjuster, and she drove a route around north middle Tennesee. There was a pet store she used to stop in, and one day she went in there, and there was an Amazon Parrot in there, who was always excited to see her, and made a big fuss when she came by. She wanted that Bird ( we already had cockatiels), but that bird cost $300!
It was middle december, and we were huddling around the wood stove (we are still huddling around the woodstove); and Jennifer came in with a clip board, where she had done some budgeting, and she had figured out that if we lived on penutbutter sandwitches and red beans and rice for a couple of months, we could affard a Shay and a Parrot, so Jennifer Got a parrot, and I got $300, and I went down to Ardvarks to get that little Shay, but it was gone! I had to buy that Cherry River Shay.
Eight or so Years Later Jennifer had Lime disease. She knew what she had, but couldn't find a doctor who would treat her for it, She ended up with Dr. Bill, Dr Tom's brother, and I met Tom through Him. We were astounded to find fellow logging modelers, neither of us knew any model train guys at all, but here we were doing exactly the same thing!
Tom's layout inhabited one stall of a two car garage, ant there was that Harrington shay! It was beautiful, but I was dissapointed in it's pulling power My # 15 a similarly sized old school PFM/Uninted Shay (a 25 T Hillcrest Shay) was much stouter.
When Tom moved to his log house in the country, and got a large basement, the little shay suddenly had a big layout! the long runs burnt up the motor in short order. He found one that would fit, and burnt it up too. It got sent to the DG CC & W RR shops for evaluation. I found a second motor, and got it installed On trials in the Gizzard it couldn't get a car up a grade #15 could push five up. Close inspection showed too much lash @ the beveled gears, so essentially one or two axles were doing all the work, and the other's teeth were missing the gear.
Efforts to fix that were unsatisfactory. when the trucks were tightenend enough to get proper gear mesh, they lost thier ability to equalize, and the critter wouldn't stay on the track, so I made a bad compromise between power and tracking, and it went back home to the C & S, where it promtly burnt out another motor, and develped a problem with a gear in the drive system. Dr Tom decided it was Terminal, and it went to the rip track by the enginehouse as a static display.
I am a glutton for punishmnet. I had built a NWSL/Keystone HOn3 shay cause I was to cheap to by a brass one ( I got one later) I snatched C & S #1; and toted it to my shops one more time. Studying the problems I concurred with Tom that the drive was shot. it needed trucks a motor and gears. The Keystone/NWSL drive was the solution. The NWSL trucks had exactly the same distance between the axles. I cut up the locomotive body, modified the frame, and replaced all of those little metric screws you can't find replacements for, with brass screws with honest english threads. after I had it together and working, it went to my paint shop and got it's paint job, including the green cab, which the locomotives on my HOn3 State Line RR now emulate.
The NWSL /Keystone modification is up there with my finest locomotive work, The modiffications to my Gem Little River 2-4-4-2, being the only thing that comes close. The NWSL mechanisn is finnicy, and needs a lot of maintenance and tweeking. Tom got tired of returning it to me for work, and dove in himself, and it has taught him a lot about mechanisms.
That hulking Cherry River shay is my #19. it is too big for my mountain division, and so it lives in the valley, delivering 10 car log trains, usually with a box car and a combine, up the 3.3% Grade to the big mill @ Crooked Creek. It has gotten a NWSL re rear kit, and is slow! @ 12 volts it takes six seconds to travel it's own length. Here is a photo of it @ Tom's bend on the North side of Crooked Creek. It's paint had to be re done, after some solder joints were repaired. and there is more work t do to it to get it up to snuff visually
Directly above the cab, is the Company store and offices building. the door you can see is the door to Dr. Gravestone's office, where he sits waiting for the next mill accident victim, or for that ambulance rail truck to come down off the mountain.
Bill Nelson