The Shay locomotive is a geared steam locomotive that originated and was primarily used in North America. The locomotives were built to the patents of Ephraim Shay, who has been credited with the popularization of the concept of a geared steam locomotive. Although the design of Ephraim Shay's early locomotives differed from later ones, there is a clear line of development that joins all Shays. Shay locomotives were especially suited to logging, mining and industrial operations and could operate successfully on steep or poor quality track.
Development Ephraim Shay (1839–1916), was a schoolteacher, a clerk in an American Civil War hospital, a civil servant, a logger, a merchant, a railway owner, and an inventor who lived in Michigan.
In the 1860s, Shay became a logger and wanted a better way to move logs to the mill than on winter snow sleds. He built his own tramway in 1875, on gauge track on wooden ties, allowing him to log all year round. Two years later he developed the idea of having an engine sit on a flatcar with a boiler, gears, and trucks that could pivot. The first Shay only had two cylinders and the front truck was mounted normally while the rear truck was fixed to the frame and could not swivel, much as normal drivers on a locomotive. He mounted the diameter by tall boiler centered on the car with the water tank over the front trucks and with an engine supplied by William Crippen mounted crossways over the rear trucks. Shay experimented first with a chain drive from the engine through the floor to the truck axle. It is not known if he powered one or both axles, but he soon found that the chain drive was not practical and he next tried a belt drive. It did not take long for the idea to become popular.
Shay applied for and was issued a patent for the basic idea in 1881.Ephraim Shay, Locomotive-Engine, , June 14, 1881. He patented an improved geared truck for his engines in 1901.Ephraim Shay, Locomotive-Truck, , August 12, 1902.
Lima Locomotive Works of Lima, Ohio built Ephraim Shay's prototype engine in 1880."Shay" Locomotives at Work, The Locomotive, Vol XV, No. 198 (February 15, 1909); page 37. Prior to 1884, all the Shays Lima produced weighed each and had just two cylinders. In 1884, they delivered the first 3-cylinder (Class B) Shay, and in 1885, the first 3-truck (Class C) Shay. The success of the Shay led to a major expansion and reorganization of the Lima company.Angus Sinclair, Development of the Locomotive Engine, New York, 1907; page 566. When Lima first received the Shay idea it was not impressed, until John Carnes influenced the company to use the idea, resulting in the classic Shay design.
In 1903, Lima could claim that it had delivered the "heaviest locomotive on drivers in the world", the first (class D) Shay, which still had three cylinders and three trucks, but weighing . This was built for the El Paso Rock Island Line from Alamogordo, New Mexico to Cox Canyon, away over winding curves and grades of up to 6%. The use of a two-truck tender was necessary because the poor water quality along the line meant that the locomotive had to carry enough water for a round trip.H. C. Hammack, A Remarkable Locomotive -- Heaviest on Drivers in the World, Locomotive Engineers' Monthly Journal, Vol. XXXVII, No. 1 (Jan. 1903); page 51.
Lewis E. Feightner, working for Lima, patented improved engine mounting brackets and a superheater for the Shay in 1908 and 1909.Lewis E. Feightner, Locomotive Crank-Shaft Bracket, , Feb. 18, 1908.Lewis E. Feightner, Superheater for Locomotive Boilers, , Nov. 9, 1909.
After the basic Shay patents had expired, Willamette Iron and Steel Works of Portland, Oregon, manufactured Shay-type locomotives, and in 1927, Willamette obtained a patent on an improved geared truck for such locomotives.Albert Claypoole, Geared Locomotive, , Mar. 29, 1927. These became known as Willamette locomotives. Since "Shay" was a trademark of Lima, strictly speaking it is incorrect to refer to locomotives manufactured by Willamette and others as "Shays". Six Shay Patent locomotives, known as Henderson-style Shays, were built by the Michigan Iron Works in Cadillac, Michigan.
Overview
According to Lima Locomotive Works in 1925, "The Shay Geared Locomotive has a wide and varied range of service, being used in industrial, quarry, contractors, logging, mining and plantation work; (also on branch lines and mountain sections of trunk-line railways). It is especially adapted to industrial railroads in and around large manufacturing plants. Its value as a switching engine is due to the rapidity with which it will accelerate a load and to its ability to spot cars in a minimum of time. It is designed to take any curve on which standard cars can be operated." The company emphasized its performance on "steep grades", "uneven track", and "track too light for a direct engine of the same axle load".
Shay locomotives had regular fire-tube boilers offset to the left to provide space for, and counterbalance the weight of, a two or three cylinder "motor," mounted vertically on the right with longitudinal drive shafts extending fore and aft from the crankshaft at wheel axle height. These shafts had universal joints and square sliding prismatic joints to accommodate the swiveling trucks. Each axle was driven by a separate bevel gear, with no side rods.
The strength of these engines lies in the fact that all wheels (including, in some engines, those under the tender) are driven. The relatively low-friction of the steel-on-steel wheel-rail interface means that locomotives needed to apply downward pressure on the rails through their wheels to maintain traction. This pressure is nearly always in the form of weight: a heavier locomotive can thus apply more force to the rails without their wheels slipping (causing a sudden loss in traction). Before widespread adoption of diesel or electric engines, many locomotive types would have a set of wheels or bogies which were unpowered and only supported the weight of the engine. Because a Shay locomotive applies power to all wheels, every wheel on a Shay locomotive which bears weight and also develops tractive effort, and thus can be used for accelerating or braking. In addition, the Shay design is a geared steam locomotive, which allows the engine to run at a higher ratio of piston strokes to wheel revolutions, allowing the engine to be run at higher power settings while reducing the possibility of wheelslip.
Shay locomotives were often known as sidewinders or stemwinders for their side-mounted drive shafts. Most were built for use in the United States, but many were exported, to about 30 countries, either by Lima, or after they had reached the end of their usefulness in the US.
Classes Approximately 2,770 Shay locomotives were built by Lima in four classes, from , between 1878 and 1945.
Class A: two cylinders, two trucks. Weight between . Class B: three cylinders, two trucks. Weight between . Class C: three cylinders, three trucks. Weight between . Class D: three cylinders, three trucks. Weight of . They were a larger, heavier, long-frame version of a Class C, but were no more powerful than Class C, and had greater fuel and water capacity, resulting in improved adhesion.
Two Shays were built with two cylinders and three trucks.
Four Shays, gauge, were built left-handed, all special ordered by the Sr. Octaviano B. Cabrera Co., San Luis de la Paz, Mexico.
Survivors
116 Shays survive today, some a combination of parts of two Shays. This is a partial list: The oldest surviving Shay, serial number 122, built in 1884, is currently displayed in Redding California, at Turtle Bay Exploration Park. The oldest operational Shay is located at the Cass Scenic Railroad State Park in West Virginia as their locomotive No. 5. It was first bought in 1905 by the West Virginia Pulp & Paper Co. at Cass. Number 5 is in fact still running on its original rail since it first ran in 1905, and it was designated the official state steam locomotive in 2004. The Yosemite Lumber Company's #4 Shay is partially restored and is on display at the Sierra Nevada Logging Museum in Arnold, California. It worked at the top of the El Portal Incline, bringing sugar pine logs to the incline head, where the loaded rail cars were lowered about in . There they were picked up by a different railroad and taken to the mill. The Arizona State Railroad Museum foundation owns former Anaconda Copper Mining Shay No. 5, which was previously stored in Montana. Although it never operated in Arizona, it was acquired by the ASRM to represent the Shays used by various logging and short line railroads in Northern Arizona, such as the Saginaw and Manistee Lumber Company. It has been displayed by the Grand Canyon Hotel in Williams since 2014. Mount Emily Lumber Company 1 was operated by the Oregon Historical Society for several years. Since 2022, it has been owned by the Oregon Rail Heritage Foundation of Portland, Oregon. Stimson Lumber Company "Peggy" (a Class: B 42-2 Shay) was built in 1909, shipped to Seattle where she changed owners until eventually the Stimpson Lumber company bought her to work their Oregon and Washington holdings. Peggy worked those holdings until 1950, when she was retired from active service; at which time she was donated to the City of Portland. Between 1969 and '71 she was refurbished and moved to her present location at the World Forestry Center, where she remains today. Restored and on outdoor display in downtown Cadillac, Michigan for free viewing is a Cadillac–Soo Lumber Company locomotive with tender. The Allen County Museum in Lima, Ohio displays a two-truck, gauge Shay which was used in a local quarry, and is probably the survivor nearest to the factory where it was built in 1925. It was rescued in 1953 only hours before being cut up for scrap, and was restored at no cost by Baldwin-Lima-Hamilton.H.L. Thomas, "Lima Reclaims Her Own," Trains magazine, December 1954 The Camino-Placerville & Lake Tahoe No. 2, a three-truck Shay, is on display at the Travel Town Museum in Los Angeles, California. The Roaring Camp & Big Trees Narrow Gauge Railroad in Felton, California, operates two Shays, No. 1 Dixiana (Class B, s/n 2593 of 1912) and No. 7 Sonora (Class C, s/n 2465 of 1911). Railtown 1897 State Historic Park preserves a class C Shay, Sierra Railroad No. 2, and occasionally runs it on its excursion trains. The Colorado Railroad Museum has one Shay, No.14, which operated on the Georgetown Loop Railroad for about 20 years. The New Jersey Museum of Transportation at Allaire State Park is restoring the gauge Ely-Thomas Lumber Company No. 6. This locomotive ran on the Pine Creek Railroad from around 1955 through 2002, when it was taken out of service for boiler work.
The Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad owns and operates three former West Side Lumber Company Shays, Nos. 10, 12, and 15, on its line just south of Yosemite National Park. Stephen F. Austin State University has a Shay locomotive (s/n 2005 of 1907) on display outside of the Arthur Temple College of Forestry and Agriculture in Nacogdoches, Texas. The Canada Science and Technology Museum owns one operational engine constructed from two locomotives, Merrill & Ring Lumber Co. numbers 3 and 4, used in their forestry operations at Theodosia Arm on the British Columbia mainland. This Shay is operated by volunteers of the Bytown Railway Society Graham County Railroad No. 1925, (Class C, s/n 3256 of 1925), survives at the North Carolina Transportation Museum in Spencer, North Carolina. 1925 is the fastest Shay ever recorded, recorded running at during "The Great Shay Race" at Railfair '99. It ran at the museum from 1997 to 2005 when the engine required boiler work. Since then it has been stored in the roundhouse as a static exhibit, and the universal joints have been removed.