Why did Shay locomotives not become more mainstream? I’ve read that only 300 or so were ever built and that they were quite successful where trackage wasn’t the greatest and for heavy grades.
What was a typical speed limit for a Shay? Would 20 mph wear it out too fast?
Numerous counterexamples to the title question. Wasn’t WM’s Shay the biggest? It was for coal hauling. N&W had one too, didn’t they? NY Central used one on 10th Ave in Manhattan.
Sounds like an ideal engine for switching in yards where track was often not the greatest.
Wonder how good a Shay would be at kicking cars.
In the logging enviornment the track condition was the determining factor in how fast anything operated. Logging track was laid on the quick, dirty and cheap manner of installation as they knew the track would soon be removed and moved onto the next timber stand.
On the WM their Shay’s were used on territory that had severe grades of 5% or more. The thought process was that with the geared drive to the wheels there would be less slippage of the driving wheels than with a conventional locomotive 4 power pulses per revolution of the drivers.
I don’t believe Shay’s were using tires on their driving wheels. If they weren’t then the locomotive could be used in the overall braking equation in getting heavy trains down the grades after the geared drive got the trains to the top of the grades. Conventional steam engines had flange bearing tires shrink fitted to their driving wheels, which had tires being heated to expand before being fitted to the realtively colder wheel center. Because of this arrangement, steam engines provided little to no braking power to the trains they handled. If engine braking was used too long, the tire could be heated to the extend it would come off the wheel creating a major mess if not a major derailment.
Lateral balance on a Shay wasn’t quite as wack as Bulleid’s Leader (which also had its boiler offset to one side) but no one was going to write home about it being highly stable, or exhibiting high-speed stability. Outside, exposed bevel gears were fine for dirty, slow application, but expect them to be noisy and perhaps wear strangely. I cannot imagine the slack, wear, and noise of trying to kick cars with one, especially as lost motion started building up.
On the other hand, if you had lightly-constructed track with low joints and lousy cross-level, with sharp curves, a Shay would be better than a rigid-frame reciprocating locomotive, and even an early Mallet (or Garratt) – lead tracks to individual mines in the mountains; steep approach tracks down to the Hudson; turnouts in street trackage a la Baltimore if you wanted more power than a Docksider (or converted Forney) made into a “dummy” so as not to scare horses.
Climax figured out how to do enclosed gears on the truck centerline, but then attempted to drive them with a jackshaft arrangement. Heisler got the motor part right (with cylinders in V driving an inline crankshaft) but went with the open gears.
A higher-speed geared engine would look like a Sentinel, or if you glossed over some issues, Besler’s W-1, and the best example was the Roosen motor locomotive, which had the boiler nicely up the centerline, offset V-2 motors alternating sides, and a quill-drive-like arrangement to get flexible low-shock drive and low unsprung mass (perhaps the lowest of any of the steam designs).
Shays were used for years as ‘steam dummies’ in lower Manhattan, and when other power took their place, at least a couple were taken to the Kingston, NY area and seen there. I suspect this had to do with high geared TE at low speed from the multicylinder marine engine… and from extremely low opportunity cost. Mr. Klepper might know how long they were run…
I would also imagine that a Shay’s specialized maintenance and parts requirements was a drawback for most roads.
N&W owned one 4 truck Shay. It was the only Lima built locomotive on the steam roster.
Page 2 of The Norfolk and Western Handbook by Conley Wallace and Aubrey Wiley.
Shays were also used on some mining rail lines.
The 0-4-4T Forney replaced the few Shays on Manhattan elevateds very early and became the standard and rxclusive power. Most “dumies” were simple 0-4-0Ts.
Some boxcab Shays were used in big cities for street running deliveries, the boxcab enclosing the machinery made the locomotive less likely to spook horses. Granted, boxcab geared locomotives were definately in the minority.
All the NYC ‘Death Avenue’ Shays were ‘horse-protected’. What Mr. Klepper was referring to are the ‘dummies’ used for street railways, where frequent service would almost always be more significant than long, heavy consists necessitating geared power (and its greater noise and commotion for a given speed). You could build a light geared engine to run a horsecar – just put a cowl on the Tom Thumb and there you’d be, as early as the 1820s – but gears are expensive both to make and maintain compared to pin joints…