Elvas Tower: Early Tee Boiler Shay - Elvas Tower

BACKGROUND

This generic locomotive represents a boot or tee boiler Class A Shay. The Class A indicates two driving cylinders.
First tee boiler Shay was built in 1883 and last one in 1903. They were prone to joint failure
at the vertical and horizontal cylinder intersections so not many were built.

MODEL

The model resulted from a discussion with Andre Ming that there were no very early virtual Shays available to operate on his historical Arkansas routes.
The basis for this Shay was Allen Norton’s “Shay 2 truck narrow gage geared steam locomotive-TSM resource kit” in the ET library.
The Shay was created with 3DCrafter 9.5 Build 1693 by importing the TSM .dst files into 3DC.
Rescaling is required during import and the drive animations are lost but all the unique Shay mechanisms are there.
Trucks and frame were rescaled to std. gage after import. Drive cylinders were reduced to two to make the loco a Class A.
Then, the tee boiler superstructure was built on this frame.

There are Freight Animations for the cab rear windows and coupler links. P opens and closes engineer window. Shift P opens and closes fireman window.
In event a link/pin car to be coupled to the loco has no link, Shift Ctrl P extends a link from the engine rear coupler. Ctrl P extends a link from the front coupler.
The loco does couple to std knuckle coupler cars.
Bell is animated with B for momentary ring or Shift B for continuous ringing.
The brakes are steam brakes for the engine only.
Sound is from the Shay D project in the ET library.
There are two crew choices available accessed from the .eng FreightAnim section. “...CrewA” for standing fireman and “...CrewB” for seated fireman.
Relettering can be done by making a .bmp file from Shay1.ace with ShapeViewer then using your favorite paint program.
Cab is 2D only.
The model is for OpenRail only.


CREDITS

Allen Norton for his Shay resource kit.

Tom Werb for his custom crew figures.

Andre Ming for setting in motion the Shay build and guidance on what she should look like.

Herb Kelsey for guidance on .eng parameters and performance testing.


RULES

You may repaint or reletter and distribute this Shay to whom ever you wish as long as everyone keeps everything FREE.

Engineer and fireman shapes and textures are provided for use with this model only and may not be copied, modified and/or transferred to a different model for distribution.
For information on adding “Tom’s Crews” to models for distribution, contact Tom Werb (“Sandy River Tom”) via private message at ElvasTower.com.

Mike aka Wellsburg