Daily Curiosities: A Funky Looking Train
POSTED by: on 10/19/2009
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So this past weekend, I went to visit my sister in Santa Cruz (thus I missed a few posts). While I was up there, my dad and I went to the Roaring Camp railroad to ride the train. This was the first time I had ever seen a geared locomotive up close and operating. n light of this, I decided to write a post about the type of locomotive I saw.
In the 19th century, as industrial logging became more prevalent in the west, there came a need for locomotives that were capable of operating on light, uneven and often steep track. The normal locomotive design just could not handle the grades, curves and cheap construction of the logging railroads and as such a new design was desperately needed. In 1877, Ephraim Shay came up with the solution: The Shay locomotive.
Shays take the original design of a steam locomotive and reconfigure it. Instead of having horizontal cylinders, they have vertical cylinders on the right side of the locomotive that are connected to a drive shaft down its side. The drive shaft connects all the axles through a series of slip joints and bevel gears. This design allows for a very flexible wheelbase that could handle the tight curves and rough track of the time. The design also created a high shaft to wheel turn ratio, thus boosting the power of the locomotive.
There were two other types of geared locomotives designed: the Heisler and the Climax.
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