IT'S ALIVE!! First run of the new Locomotive

How does it sound to have an afternoon of noxious fumes from burning fuel, sitting in the hot sun, nearly setting fire to a friends yard, handling lots of greasy mechanical parts and burning your fingers several times?  I know-- like paradise right?  Well at least for a live steamer it is.  Yesterday I got together with my friends David and Henner and we got to test out our new 1:8 scale locomotive.  Our Friend Mark also came over to help "supervise".  As you can see from the picture above Mark had a hand at running too.

This engine is a model of one of the most well known Shay type logging engines in the world.  It is also a model of what could possibly be the oldest surviving Shay in the world.  Rumor has it that at one point there was even talk of sending the prototype locomotive to the Smithsonian.  I am very familiar with this type of engine because eight years ago I bought a 1:20 scale model of the same engine.  The model I am speaking of is well known-- almost legendary, in the small scale live steam community.  It is the Accucraft 2 cylinder Shay.  If you have not seen this engine before and you have ever thought about owning a live steam train, I highly recommend you have a look at Accucraft's website,  find a dealer, and buy one.  I have thoroughly enjoyed mine, and at serial number 13, mine is one of the oldest ones out there.  It continues to run like a Swiss watch to this day.

Because this locomotive carved out a special place in my heart at a very early stage in my live-steam career, I jumped at the chance to own a larger, ride-on scale, version of the engine.  As I mentioned in a previous post, the 1:8 scale engine has a bit of history and had a series of articles in Live Steam magazine, and a book written about it.  I cover more of the history in this post on a live steam message board.

If you would like to read some more about our fist experience firing and running the engine please take a look at the topic I started at MyLargeScale.com.

There are additional pictures of the first run of the engine in the gallery here.

The engine preformed admirably and I am sure our experiences will only get better as we learn all of it's quirks.    My friend David thoroughly documented the steamup process and shot a bunch of video in HD.  I will update when he has posted the new images and video.

Thanks for reading, and full steam ahead.