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.

Walthers Mainline 2025 Run Plymouth ML-8

As far as I can tell, the only differences between the 2017 run of the Walthers Mainline Plymouth ML-8 and the 2025 run are the paint schemes and the DCC decoder. The 2017 had a Soundtraxx decoder, and the 2025 has an ESU LokPilot 5. However, the LokPilot 5 is programmed for momentunm in CVs 3 and 4, which the Soundtraxx was not. I plan to set these to 0, which is just my preference.

I got the loco painted and lettered for M Lummus Railroad Material Contractor, which was an actual owner of a Plymouth ML-8 in Richmond, California. According to the Arizona Railroad Museum, where it is now, it was built in 1943 as US Army 7595. It was sold to Lummus in 1966. Just for fun, I asked Chrome AI mode if it had any other info, and it said it may have been used to dismantle the Pickering Lumber operation in Tuolumne County, California, in the late 1960s. I can't find other info to confirm this, but it sounds logical.

The loco passed through other rail contrractors before being donated to the Arizona Railroad Museum in 1988. Below is a prototype photo I found on the web, photographer unknown.

Swapping In A Locomotive Junk Pile

In last week's post, I looked at swapping some resin junk pile castings around. My main subject was this one:

It's a somewhat rough and fanciful derelict tank loco, but it'll do as a background model. I tried to pry the old castings out to make room for it, but the Sculptamold that held them in had really hardened. It suddently occurred to me that I could soften it by spraying it with water in the garden sprayer I use to glue down scenery, so I tried. It worked almost instantly. So the new junk pile is in place. I still need to touch up a couple of chipa.

Now I have to find a location for the ones I swapped out, but I think I have an idea.

Rearranging Some Resin Castings

Here is the Malabar District on my HO layout, a semi-standalone micro in an adjoining basement storage room, although it's connected via a tunnel through the wall. It's set anywhere from the San Joaquin Valley to eastern Colorado or maybe even western Kansas or Nebraska.

I've been using a lot of resin junk pile and small scene castings from Rusty Rail. These come unpainted, but although they take some time and effort to paint, they leave a lot of room for creativity. I've been making up a loco junk yard outside my Yorke industrial engine shed. The loco on the right is a mostly one-piece derelict Shay loco.

Here's the Shay casting before paint.

Not too long ago, I finished another resin junk loco casting. I'm aiming to swap out some other castings so I can fit this new one into the scene and maybe move others elsewhere on the layout.

Here are two other Rusty Rail junk piles elsewhere on the layout.

I got inspiration for weathering the bulldozer from the Gold Rush TV show.

The T1 Trust -- I Don't Get It

The video above reflects a somwwhat revisionist view of the PRR T1, stressing that it was often run at speeds over 130 mph on the track between Crestline, OH and Fort Wayne, IN. This was above the speedometer limit of 120 mph and well above the authorized speed in the employee timetable. This was also above the warranty speed of the Franklin rotary poppet valves, which frequently failed on these locomotives, not because of a design flaw, but because trhey were never intended to run at those speeds.

I'm not surprised at these revelations. I've read that in the late 1930s, PRR top management intended a major speedup of both passenger and freight trains on its main lines. The T1 and Q2 duplex locomotives were part of this program, since the intent of the duplex design was to minimize the constantly shifting weight of the siderods, which would allow higher speeds. Electrfication to Pittsburgh was also part of this plan. However, World War II interrupted the program, while postwar dieselization diverted the capital it would have needed.

There can be no question that the T1s could have pulled passenger trains at 100-120 mph in normal service, as could have the GG1s. However, the overall PRR speedup required track and alignment upgrades that never took place, and the PRR never made money after World War II. This was all nothing but a might-have-been, and the T1 was just an artifact of that circumstance. No matter, railfans have created something of a fantasy around the PRR, and the T1 is an important part of it.

Enter the T1 Trust. Chrome A1 mode does a good job of summarizing the main points the T1 Trust itself doesn't quite make on its own website:

The T1 Trust, formally known as the Pennsylvania Railroad T1 Steam Locomotive Trust, is a non-profit organization building a brand-new, fully functional Pennsylvania Railroad (PRR) T1 class steam locomotive from scratch. This new locomotive, numbered 5550, will be the 53rd member of the class, as all 52 original T1s were scrapped decades ago.

Project Overview

• Mission: The Trust aims to reignite the golden age of steam by building a powerful mainline excursion engine that will also attempt to achieve the world speed record for a steam locomotive.
• Design: The PRR T1 was an advanced, streamlined 4-4-4-4 steam locomotive known for its speed, power, and art-deco design. The new locomotive 5550 will be a "continuation" of the class, incorporating modern welding techniques and other subtle engineering improvements while maintaining the original spirit and appearance.

All well and good, but to break the steam world speed record, you're going to need to have track that allows speeds over about 130 mph. In North America, there are only two possibilities, the DOT test track in Pueblo, CO, and the Amtrak Northeast Corridor in a few stretches. Whether the DOT would allow a steam loco on its test track is an open question -- steam locomotive siderods put a shifting load on the rail that could damage the track. The same applies to Amtrak, with the additional problem that to avoid interruption of normal schedules, a test could only be done in the very early morning, making daylight photography impossible.

But there's an additional problem that even to run rthe T1 at 70 mph speeds on a Class 1 mainline, the Class 1 railroad has to think this is a good idea. The UP runs its own steam locos, because they put the UP name in front of the public. Other railroads have proven less and less likely to allow steam excursions. A PRR that would gain publicity by running a T1 is long dead; Norfolk Southern wouldn't see the point. Steam excursions attract large crowds of spectators along the tracks, with the potential for irresponsible behavior, significantly increasing the potential for accidents and liability issues.

In addition, in recent decades, the North American rail network is essentially full. Excursion trains can disrupt schedules and require significant extra manpower to manage the public and ensure smooth operations, which the railroads are often unwilling to provide. The amounts needed for indemnification and insurance coverage are probably beyond even the T1 Trust. But beyond that, most excursion steam locomotives run with a diesel helper no matter what, to be sure the train can be pulled off the main line if the steam loco fails. But no diesel helper can run at 100-140 mph in any case.

So as a practicasl matter, the T1 will normally operate on museum or preservation railroads where the speed limit is much lower and the track might not even accommodate the T1's weight. But let's grant the best possible case: let's say the DOT allows the faux T! on its test track, and it smashes the previous official world speed record for a steam locomotive of 126 mph -- hey, grant that it'll do over 140. This will never be anything but an asterisk in the record book, taking place maybe a century after the last record, which was set during the actual age of steam.

The PRR of railfan and modeler fantasy never actually existed, and I say this as someone whose lifetime train riding mileage was overwhelmingly on the old, actual PRR -- I commuted to school several times a year on the whole length of the northeast corridor. It was never much fun. The T1 Trust is a chimera.