Hi,
Would it be realistic for a Shay locomotive to be hauling 6 or 7 cars? (i.e. 2 reefers for logging camp food, 1 boxcar for other supplies, 4 log cars (empties returning to camp) and a caboose). I know they were usually used on short trains, I’m just not sure how short.
Thanks in advance,
tbdanny
Yup, if the grade’s not too steep. And that IS a short train–especially with the empties.
My guess is that your Shay model won’t be able to pull as many cars as a real one, so I’d recommend just adding as many cars as you want and/or as many as the loco will pull.
Ed
Go check out the Western Maryland websites you would be amazed at what their Shays hauled. BTW they owned and still do the largest one ever built. really cool stuff
In the book “Steam Along the Boundary” a Shay engine is pictured along with the caption of hauling over 20 ore cars from the Mine to the Smelter. This is one of the larger Shays that the CPR ran in the copper rich Southern British Columbia.
Unless the route was a real mountain goat trail, a Shay could haul more cars than you might think. Skeleton log cars, especially, were featherweights compared to fully-floored mainline flatcars, so a Shay headed into the woods might be able to pull more empties upgrade than it could safely handle loads downgrade.
Just took a quick glance at Last of the Three-Foot Loggers. The West Side typically handled 20+ loaded flats behind a three truck Shay, and the empty-car trains in the photos appear to be of equal length. If that was normal on a three footer, I would expect the bigger, heavier standard gauge Shays to handle equivalent loads.
Chuck (Modelng Central Japan in September, 1964)
I’ve seen some photos of Shays pulling 15-20 loaded log cars. The grade they must climb will obviously be important in determining the maximum.
Also depends on the size of the shay. My large 3 truck shay is good for several log cars or a couple of general freight cars on most any logging grade up to 8%. But mine is a large 150 ton 3 truck brass shay with plenty of ballest. Cheers Mike
You must have some over-fed loggers at camp.
Mark
Back in the days before chainsaws and diesel-powered log-hoggers, lumberjacks routinely ate 7000+ calories a day, were as tough as whipcord and didn’t carry enough excess fat to fry an egg. This was equally true in Japan. (My wife’s family owned the land and the trees, and had to feed the woods crew.)
Toward the end of Last of the 3-Foot Loggers there’s a page of home-built (in the West Side shops) freight equipment, including, “Two different types of reefers used in commissary service.” The following page has six photos of crummies, no two alike, all looking like something a ten year old would put together with Legos. The log cars were center sills with log bunks over the body bolsters…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
But Chuck, the loggers eat two cars worth of food to produce four cars of logs! I’d think something in the order of about one reefer a week (probably not fully loaded) and the loggers producing many scores of log-bearing cars in the same period would be more in line. And they shouldn’t need a box car load of tools/supplies a day either. One car a a month should have been plenty. Gee, three reefer/box cars would fill my entire home, from top to bottom, including the attic! They wouldn’t be supplying a regiment of thousands of men, would they?
Rio Grande Models version of a Westside Lumber Co.'s reefer:
Mark
Note that the OP didn’t say (though perhaps lightly implied) that this train would be typical of regular service. Perhaps this train represents food going in for the annual company picnic or for Christmas.
That said, I think the only thing that would need a reefer going into a logging camp of the implied period would be dressed meat. And what, more or less, thrives near a logging camp? Game. I also have the impression that the food was provided by the company, and I would expect the company to search out the lower priced sources of calories. That would not generally run towards “imported” meat.
There are no doubt some very revealing and interesting non-picture books written about the life of a logger, and one might find out the typical meals of the day. Going on to speculation, I would think that flour, sugar, eggs, bacon, and potatoes and perhaps canned/bottled foods would be common foodstuffs–none of which required refrigeration at the time. A company interested in it’s workers would undoubtedly bring in the occasional “treat”, but I think reefers would be pretty rare.
Also, it wouldn’t have been the stupidest thing to do to transport dynamite in a reefer–there’s another use. Logging is certainly not a heavy user of explosives, but there were times…
Ed
PS: Reefers don’t have to be used as reefers; they can also be used for non-refrigerated transport–especially if that’s all that is available. Perhaps OP’s operation was able to get a good deal on reefers but uses them almost exclusively as boxcars.
Shays also haul coal and and some even hauled general freight…
Here’s a picture of Graham County RR # 1926 with a short train.Looks like a boxcar,4 bulkhead flats loaded with lumber and their combine.
Perhaps it is time for a picture of an engineer driving a shay.
Mark
The Shay was designed for the more impossible tasks a normal rodded engine couldn’t handle, and all of its weight were on powered trucks. Designed for sharper curves, heavier grades, and rougher track.
Logging lines frequently changed some tracks around in the logging areas and they may sometimes quickly lay ties/rail right on the ground.
There were shays built with wood rail design, just wheels shaped to lay over tree logs line up like rail.
Ya know, that picture shows how much forward visibility is improved if you just move that pesky boiler over to the left a bit.
Ed
Back to logging route consists:
Tank cars - not usually for water, but for fuel. Logging on National Forest land required all steam boilers (including those of donkey engines) to burn oil, to prevent sparks from igniting the frequently highly inflammable forest. Later there were a lot of diesel-engined machines used, from diesel-powered donkeys to grading machinery to trucks.
All of that machinery moved into the woods on the railroad, too. The roads used by the log trucks between cutting sides and reload points on the railroad were not interconnected, nor were they connected to the ‘civilian’ road net. Photos of machines on the West Side’s trains in Last of the 3-foot Loggers include a road grader, a bulldozer, a log truck and what appeared to be a crawler crane.
Like the reefers, fuel cars and machinery didn’t run in every train. Most of those illustrated were log cars - empty into the woods, loaded out.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)