Thank you, Ephraim Shay

Designed by Ephraim Shay, and named after the inventor, the geared locomotive proved to be an invaluable tool in the logging industry. As early as 1872 he began development of a new locomotive that used gears rather than standard rods to propel the device forward. He built the design from the ground up using a flatcar as a base. Upon this he placed a boiler, vertical cylinders, and two-axle trucks on each end. The uniqueness of his design included that essentially the vertical cylinders drive a

horizontal crank shaft attached to drive shafts extending to each truck axle. These axles have gearboxes attached to them which propels the engine forward. Because geared steam locomotives have all of their trucks powered, they provided excellent adhesion enabling them to climb grades well over 5% (something all but unthinkable on main line railroads), although this high adhesion factor limited its top speed to just 18 mph. The flexibility of the design allowed each truck to negotiate the track independently of the other, thus keeping the locomotive on the rails and allowing it to operate over almost any type of track (which was usually nothing more than rails laid directly onto a hillside for most logging operations). The above information was condensed from the article "Shay Locomotives" Which was written (and last revised on May 12, 2023) by Adam Burns. It comes from the website: https://www.american-rails.com/shay.html This website provides the following statistics about Shay Locomotives https://www.shaylocomotives.com/ 2,767 Shays were built over 67 years under four company names. (116 survive) 350 were built by Lima Machine Works between 1878 and April 12, 1892; 1,557 were built by Lima Locomotive & Machine Co. between April 12, 1892 and 1912; 362 were built by Lima Locomotive Corporation between 1912 and March 1916; 498 were built by Lima Locomotive Works, Inc. between March 1916 and 1945; If you rank them by Class, MPH and Speed Range you get the following: 685 were 2-cylinders/2-trucks known as Class A that could travel between 7.7 - 17.5 MPH; 2 were 2-cylinders/3-trucks known as Special that could travel between 14.0 - 16.2 MPH; 1,481 were 3-cylinders/2-trucks known as Class B that could travel between 10.1 - 21.0 MPH; 580 were 3-cylinders/3-trucks known as Class C that could travel between 10.1 - 27.9 MPH; and 20 were 3-cylinders/4-trucks known as Class D that could travel between 18.8 - 26.7 MPH. Once again, I have an interesting post card from a publisher about which I know nothing.