Shay locomotive

He built his own tramway in 1875, on 2 ft 2 in (660 mm) gauge track on wooden ties, allowing him to log all year round.

Two years later he developed the idea of having an engine sit on a flatcar with a boiler, gears, and trucks that could pivot.

This was built for the El Paso Rock Island Line from Alamogordo, New Mexico to Cox Canyon, 31 miles (50 km) away over winding curves and grades of up to 6%.

[5][better source needed] Lewis E. Feightner, working for Lima, patented improved engine mounting brackets and a superheater for the Shay in 1908 and 1909.

[6][7] After the basic Shay patents had expired, Willamette Iron and Steel Works of Portland, Oregon, manufactured Shay-type locomotives, and in 1927, Willamette obtained a patent on an improved geared truck for such locomotives.

According to Lima Locomotive Works in 1925, "The Shay Geared Locomotive has a wide and varied range of service, being used in industrial, quarry, contractors, logging, mining and plantation work; (also on branch lines and mountain sections of trunk-line railways).

Its value as a switching engine is due to the rapidity with which it will accelerate a load and to its ability to spot cars in a minimum of time.

[9] Shay locomotives had regular fire-tube boilers offset to the left to provide space for, and counterbalance the weight of, a two or three cylinder "motor," mounted vertically on the right with longitudinal drive shafts extending fore and aft from the crankshaft at wheel axle height.

Four Shays, 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in) gauge, were built left-handed, all special ordered by the Sr. Octaviano B. Cabrera Co.,[10] San Luis de la Paz, Mexico.