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Mark Mihalyi's Shays
Nelson Riedel NARiedel@Adelphia.net
Initial: 5/03/03 Last Revised:03/25/2004
Mark Mihalyi lives southwest of Pittsburgh.
He spotted the NLW website and we exchanged some data on Shay progress.
When I mentioned that a friend and I were going to Cass he suggested
that we stop by his shop for a chat and see his shays.
| While Mark was showing us around my friend (a guy
with several Triumphs) noticed a car with a car cover. He said
that it looked like a TR6 front spoiler sticking below the
cover. We were some distance away with a view under the
car. I said it wasn't a Triumph since there were no puddles
underneath. Turns out that it was a beautiful '76 TR6 that
Mark purchased new. We spend a bit of time discussing
the normal TR problems. I didn't ask but suspect that Mark
drained all the fluids before storing it in the fall. That
would explain the lack of puddles. |
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Mark is building two Shays at
once. He didn't explain why he was building two, however, I suspect
it relates to his Triumph experience. Many of the folks with
Triumphs have two or more. There reason is, especially here in the
north, top down weather is a short part of the year so one doesn't
want to miss the whole year due to a failure, which is likely. I've found that it's best to have three, one to drive, one
to have torn down for restoration and the third to be on jacks awaiting
repair parts. This readily extends to locomotives. I
think a Shay, a Climax and a Heisler would make a really nice stable.
Mark has the trucks and frames done as
seen below. He's beginning to work on the engines. He has a
shop with a large lathe and mill so it's ideal for live steaming. (I bet he tells
the wife he has to work a lot of
overtime.)
| Mark also has the boilers all cut
out. That's Mark in the blue shirt
explaining a fine point. I'm going to have to ask
him how he made such neat saw cuts on the boiler pieces.
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Update 3/14/2004: Visited Mark again and took a few
more photos. Next photo shows Mark's bright red end sills.
Neat! The poling pocket are from Railroad
Warehouse.
| Frame I Beam: Several people inquired about the
earlier photo of Mark's frames -- it looks like he had found scale
I beams. Mark explained that he made the I beams from two
channels as per Kenneth's drawings. He first tried welding
the two channels together but that distorted the pieces. He
then tried brazing the two channels together and that worked
well. He milled the tops and bottoms smooth as
shown in the photo on the right. Wish I'd done that. |
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| Gear Guards: Mark made some neat
guards over the gears on the trucks. This and the next photo
show the brass guards.
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| Another view of the guard. Wonder if that
will keep a loose shoe lace out of the shaft. Maybe one
should wear engineer's loafers. |
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| Slip Joints: Mark beveled the corners of the female slip
joints as shown in the photo. This is a really nice touch
that makes them look smaller. |
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| Engines: This photo shows the engines on Mark's two
shays. The crankcases are finished and mounted as are
the crosshead guides. Expect it
won't be long until the those engines are turning on
compressed air. |
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