Shay Locomotives

[Anonymous]

Thanks. I geuss I am a goad speler[:D]. I guess I want to be tidy or something. Maybe my mom's advice about not misspelling words in my homework.[:D][:p]
Dacote, I have heard about the Cass Scenic Railroad. It runs excursion service on the former Mower Lumber Company logging line. It owns the largest Lima-built Shay, which was a three-cylinder, three-truck unit built oringinally for the Western Maryland Railroad in 1945. It weighed 324,000 pounds and had a tractive effort of 59,700 pounds. The large locomotive operated on the 9 percent grades of the Western Maryland's Chaffee Branch but was retired in 1953 and sent to the Baltimore and Ohio Transportation Museum. In April 1980, the loco was taken to Cass.

[dacort]

On the Cass Scenic Railroad website, it says they have grades up to 11%.

http://www.cassrailroad.com/

[tatans]

12? c'mon, maybe you should teach spelling on this forum, good for you!! you will find with a logging layout, you will be in a minority, but a few guys on this forum will be very helpful. A lot of equipment was borrowed or made from scratch so your imagination can go wild. Keep in touch here with your progress and send some photos,dude.

[Anonymous]

Hi, everybody! I'm 12, and have a 20' by 22' layout. I'm thinking of having a logging branch. So,I have a question about Shays. I already know that the Shay geared locomotive was developed by Ephraim Shay (1839--1916), a Michigan logger who grew weary of the difficulties of skidding and floating logs to his sawmill. Tinkering in his workshop in the winter months, Shay built his first operating locomotive in 1880. It was basically a flatcar with adjacent vertical steam cylinders set along the right side; a vertical boiler was in the middle and a water barrel and fuel box occupied the opposite ends. A crankshaft drove a pair of geared trucks through a system of universal joints and drive shafts along the cylinder side.
In 1882, Shay assigned manufacturing rights to a small company which would grow into the huge Lima Locomotive Works. The design was refined and enlarged over the years; it was offered in models burning wood, coal, or oil. This locomotive differed from the Climax and Heislers by the side-mounted cylinders and running gear as well as the pronounced offset of the boiler, designed to balance the weight of the cylinders. Both two-, and three-cylinder versions were offered as well as two-, three- , and four-truck models. A Shay might only go 12 mph on level and could climb very steep grades. Phew.
Now, my question is how steep of grades can the model and the prototype trasverse? Any replies would be helpful.[tup][(-D]