Shays in Europe?

[GP-9_Man11786]

I know Shay geared locomotives were exported to several countres. Did any go to Europe or the UK? Or were there any European equivilants?

[RME]

To my knowledge no Shays were exported to Europe or the UK (or Climaxes or Heislers).  Part of the reason was that the Shay was inherently a slow and relatively noisy thing, specifically intended to work on light and poor track -- the European answer to that sort of concern was more the Beyer-Garratt locomotive than an offset engine with Cardan shaft drive to outside exposed gears.  (Although one might argue that Bulleid's Leader wound up attempting the offset-boiler arrangement within the British loading gage ... an interesting attempt.)

There were places that used geared locomotives -- New Zealand, for one -- but some combination of shipping cost, weight requirements, and perhaps patent concerns (not that the New Zealanders cared much about those! ) meant that no Shay was built (except for model live-steam service, which I don't think counts here).  Price did build a Heisler under license, the last one constructed.

You can look at some of the locomotive historical sites to see what the Europeans (and British) did with geared locomotives.  The famous Douglas Self site in particular is an interesting resource...