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Replacing Cracked Driving Gears on Trucks of 3 Truck Shay Locomotive
Kevin (a regular contributor to this blog) finally gets to ask his own question:
“Hi, I live in New Zealand and model in HO scale, however I have a Bachmann 3 truck shay loco and the driving gears on the trucks have cracked, and as such do not drive the loco. I tried contacting the new Zealand agents for replacement steel gears, but they can only supply the plastic ones, and said they could not guarantee that the same thing would happen again. Does anyone know where I can get the steel ones from and approx cost thanks?”
If anyone can assist Kevin, please add a comment under this post.
6 Responses to Replacing Cracked Driving Gears on Trucks of 3 Truck Shay Locomotive
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Kevin, The guys in my Friday night train running group have had the same issues with other engines and are getting replacement gears better than the plastic. I will ask the question to them and see if there is a source. Newman Atkinson Terre Haute Indiana USA
You could try Bachmann website http://estore.bachmanntrains.com/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=66_68_689
For sure Bachmann has the metal gears. I recently bought the middle truck for the Shay for around $40. Good luck.
“plastic” gears are either Delrin, or a form of common styrene. Or they can be nylon. Not having had this experience yet (I’m sure to one day), is it possible to remove the gear from the shaft and reassemble it with the proper glue, then carefully ream the central hole so it’s a slip fit on its axle.
And then glue it in place with silicon sealant. WHY? These gears crack because of differential expansion, the axle shaft grows more quickly than the hole in the gear, which is a friction fit backed up with Loctite or similar CA glue.
If the hole is slightly larger than the shaft and the fixing medium is flexible then maybe the gears won’t crack again. I’m talking gnats whiskers here guys but common sense suggests that this might just work.
I don’t know if tbis will help, but check Northwest Short Line, they have a side variety of brass gears and may have a suitabke replacement
I bought metal gear sets from Bachmann for my 3 truck Shay, they work great. Go to their web site for replacement parts.