Feshing Out The Rockwork On The Small N Layout

I finished building out the rockwork inside the curve at one end of the small 27" by 48" N layout, building up a scenery base behind it with more Woodland Scenics white foam.

I like the way it provides a scenic divide while putting the relative size of the track and trains in perspective. The scenic base of the hill will taper farther in toward the center of the layout.

Broadway Limited Class D Shay

Two weeks ago, I posted on research I did on Class D Shays. The upcoming Broadway Limited Class D was a model I always wanted to get, and I did the research to help me decide which road name I most wanted. I wound up focusng on El Paso Rock Island Route 105:

Here's a picture of the prototype:

As I noted in my previous post, this loco was built to operate on the Alsmogordo & Sacramento Valley branch of the El Paso & Northeastern, where it carried ties for construction of the El Paso-Tucumcari main line. It lasted in this service about three years before it was sold to a Mexican operator.

Broadway Limited appears to have followed Pacific Fast Mail's 1960s philosophy, which was to issue a "generic" model of any particular prototype with features that don't match any one individual locomotive. Thus every BLI model has acetylene style headlights, but also an electric generator. The prototypes were built over a relatively short time period before electric headlights were in general use, and photos suggest that at least some never had electric headlights. Nevertheless, the sound features include an electric generator whine to power the acetylene headlight.

However, in many cases, there are so few prototype photos of these locomotives that it's very difficult to determine exactly what features individual locos had at particular times, and for several prototypes, there's no information on exactly where and in what service they operated.

I chose the El Paso Rock Island Route prototype, even though the model features least resemble the actual loco in the prototype photo, because it matches the southwest area of some of my layout scenery, and because I have some ties to New Mexico. As a Boy Scout, I went to the Philmont Scout Ranch, and in later years I traveled through several times, as well as working for a client in Albuquerque, so the loco is a souvenir as much as anything.

I'm still figuring out the best way to tweak the sound to get the best results. I've ridden behind Shays on the Roaring Camp & Big Trees and the Georgetown Leep Railroad, and while the sound has the correct triplet cadence of a three-cylinder loco, I think the chuff rate is too slow, and the bark of the exhaust isn't as muffled as on the prototype. I'm going to turn the volume down.

Cleaning Up My Logging Area

I have a Broadway Limited Class D Shay on order, and I decided to get my small logging branch in shape for its arrival. I also got the Walthers Plymouth ML-8 lettered for M Lummus Railroad Construction in part to use on my logging line, as I heard it may have been used to dismantle the Pickering Lumber operation.

I'll show more after the Shay arrives.

As an update, I discovered while searhing today that M Lummus was Marty Lummus, whose headquarters was in Richmond, CA, with another yard in Phoenix, AZ. He had at least two small Plymouths in an operation that lasted at least from the 1960s to the 1980s.

Researching The New Broadway Limited Class D Shay

The new Broadway Limited Class D four-truck shay, which has been turning up in stores over the past week, is an intriguing model, although it isn't really a stereotypical Shay that you'd expect to see on logging railroads. The Broadway Limited artwork is below:

The Shay locomotive site is the best source on these locos. Only 20 Class D Shays were built, for a limited period between 1902 and 1913. Most were built for Class I railroads, which otherwise used very few Shays. On the other hand, most of these seem to have been sold off pretty quickly as unsatisfactory.

The first class D was a 100-ton loco built for the El Paso Rock Island Route as 105 in March 1902.

The name of this stretch of line changes frequently. It's first referred to as the Alamogordo & Sacramento Mountain in New Mexico, which became part of the El Paso & Northeastern, which in turn was absorbed by the El Paso & Southwestern. The A&SM was later known as the Cloudcroft Branch of the Southern Pacific. The best documentation of the loco's use is in a National Park Service site:

The A&SM made the headlines when in 1902 it took delivery of the largest Shay geared drive locomotive built to date. Obviously an attempt to increase the overall capacity of the railroad, the locomotive was a magnificent machine weighing 291,000 pounds in working order (The Railroad Gazette 1902). The Shay locomotive was a patented design built by the Lima Locomotive & Machine Company of Lima, Ohio. The boiler, cab, and tender were carried on four center-bearing swivel trucks.

. . . Although it was not a long-term success, the big Shay made several spectacular trips over the A&SM. One trip saw it pulling 27 empty log cars of 16,000 pounds each plus a caboose weighing 12,000 pounds, a net weight of 222 tons, all the way to Cox Canyon. On another well recorded trip, the locomotive pulled 41 empty log cars and the caboose, net 334 tons, to Toboggan (Figure 40). This train was too long to traverse the switchbacks (The Railroad Gazette 1902). It is likely that trains of this length also proved to be unstable on the numerous sharp curves. The downfall of the Shay locomotive in main line service on the A&SM was its slow speed, coupled with high maintenance costs on the complex drive train. The difficulty of lubricating the gears and universals on a long run added to the problem. The big Shay did not find a permanent home on the A&SM and was sold in a few years (Homes 1965).

. . . Various attempts were made to find more powerful locomotives for the A&SM. In 1916, the EP&SW purchased another four-truck Shay. This one was even heavier than the 1902 example, weighing in at over 150 tons. It was over a year being rebuilt at the El Paso shops, while roadbed improvements were made along the A&SM. It wasn't until January 1918 that trial runs were made, and they turned out to be dismal failures. The enormous locomotive proved to be too cumbersome for the sharp curves, and it demanded unreasonable quantities of fuel and water. On its last trip, it failed to reach Cloudcroft on a single tank of fuel (Weekly Cloudcrofter 1917c).

This was totally unacceptable as a long-term proposition, and the big locomotive was sold in 1920 to the Red River Lumber Company in California. It worked there for many years (Howes 1965).

BLI has produced Class Ds lettered for the locos as El Paso Rock Island Route, El Paso & Southwestern, and Red River Lumber.

The next Class D built was Chesapeake & Ohio 6, builder number 1586 in 1906. This was the first of 15 Class Ds the C&O owned, which was 75% of the total production. These also lasted the longest of any with a Class 1 except for WM 5, being sold in 1923-24. They were apparently used on branches in the Thurmond, WV area, but the branches were rerouted about 1923 to eliminate the grades that required the Shays.

The next Class D was Western Maryland 900, ordered by the West Virginia Central & Pittsburg RY in 1906. Apparently Lima was selling Class Ds as suitable for certain types of main line service where the extra tender water capacity could offset the overall slow speed of a Shay by requiring fewer water stops. Apparently the WM thought the loco might work in main line pusher service, but the problem was that while it could push a train acceptably uphill, it was too slow returning back downhill, Like the A&SM loco, it was sold to Mexico.

The Carolina & Northwestern Class D was built in July 1907. Little else is known about it, and it passed through a number of owners before being sold to the Red River Lumber Co in California in 1920. BLI has amodel with this paint scheme. The photo shows it on Red River Lumber.

Southern Railway had two Class Ds built in September 1907, numbers 4000-4001. Little else is known about them. They were both sold to the C&O in 1911. BLI has models with this paint scheme.

The Norfolk & Western had one Class D numbered 56, later 156, built in August 1907. Little else is known about it. It was sold to Phelps Dodge Copper in 1917 and then to Red River Lumber in 1920. BLI has a model in rhe N&W scheme.

The loco that became Western Maryland 5 was built as C&O 11 in 1910. It was sold for scrap with the rest of C&O's Class Ds in 1923, but West Virginia Pulp & Paper bought it and put it in service as their #14. Western Maryland then bought it from WVP&P in 1930, and it lasted as #5 until being scrapped after 1950. BLI has a model painted for WM 5.

It should be noted that the BLI model isn't really suited for traditional Shay lumber style layouts, since it has a recommended radius of 18", which is greater than many modelers use with smaller geared locos. On the other hand, very littlr is known about the actual service in which many of these locos operated, so the proper prototype use of these models is anyone's guess.