Deer Park Album 4
The Shay Locomotive Page
Columbia Falls is located in the foothills of the majestic Glacier Park in north western Montana.
Ten to fifteen miles west of the West Glacier entrance this little city is snuggled in time, almost as it was 50 years ago or perhaps longer. You see sights and scenery where ever you look. But there is one thing you don't see, you feel it. If Montana has a motto, it would be, "Strangers are only friends we haven't met."
They want to share the past with the world, so they put this relic in a little park and restored it. The following is a story in pictures taken by Wally Lee Parker in the Summer of 2007.
Columbia Falls is located in the foothills of the majestic Glacier Park in north western Montana.
Ten to fifteen miles west of the West Glacier entrance this little city is snuggled in time, almost as it was 50 years ago or perhaps longer. You see sights and scenery where ever you look. But there is one thing you don't see, you feel it. If Montana has a motto, it would be, "Strangers are only friends we haven't met."
They want to share the past with the world, so they put this relic in a little park and restored it. The following is a story in pictures taken by Wally Lee Parker in the Summer of 2007.
This is a Shay locomotive. It was designed for pulling flat cars loaded with logs out of steep and winding terrain. It traveled at an average speed of 12 miles per hour. Slow but much faster and far more powerfull than teams of mules and horses that it replaced.
Far greater detail of the workings of a Shay locomotive is available in our "REPORTS TO THE CLAYTON/DEER PARK HISTORICAL SOCIETY Volume 4. The cost is $3.00 including postage. Please send your request to Mr. Bill Sebright, PO Box 293 Clayton, WA. 99110
Black is Beautiful
This is our former Managing Editor, Mr. Wally Lee Parker, author, historian. Wally and his wife Pat drove to Columbia Falls, Montana to get these detailed photos of a Shay which is becoming an endangered spieces. The vast majority were scrapped by the owners when they were no longer of use.
She ran once upon a time and it is not beyond reason it could very easily happen again.
This ‘Shay’ style steam engine, produced by the Lima Locomotive Works of Lima, Ohio, was once the property of the Deer Park Lumber Company. The photo - just one of the remarkable photographs from the Society’s ‘Lawrence Zimmerer Collection’ - was identified by C&DPHS associate Robert “Bobj” Berger as a Lima model ‘B 42-2’. // Bobj, a railroad history enthusiast, said, “This type of engine was designed primarily for work in the timber industry – designed to run at slow speed along very poor tracks with very tight turns.” // Dale Jones, railroad historian and author, told the society that records indicate the Deer Park Lumber Company owned five locomotives. Three of those were “normal” steam rod engines, the other two were gear-driven Shays. Dale’s research uncovered the ‘shop numbers’ for those two engines, but those numbers lead to engines so similar that they can’t be identified from the available photo alone. We do know that one engine, built in 1913, was owned by Deer Park Lumber from 1922 until 1930. The other, built in 1909 and purchased from a western Washington logging company at an unspecified date, was advertised for sale - presumable by Deer Park Lumber - in 1926. No other dates are currently available for this second engine. // What makes the Shay engines unique are the cylinders setting vertically on one side of the engine (usually the right). These drive a crankshaft that in turn spins drivelines running both forward and back. These drivelines attach to gear boxes on the wheels, where teeth on the driveshafts engage teeth fixed around the exterior surface of the drive wheels.
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This paricular machine was built in 1904. They certainly made it stout. Just look at the undercarriage. It's a masterpiece.
If one happened to be run down by one of these machines the following 5 or 6 photos will give an idea of what you will have a pretty good view of.
Casey Jones, mounted to the cabin, Casey Jones with his orders in his hand...
The view down those tracks left a little to be desired
One of the Deer Park Lumber Company's Shays.
I didn't see no DEAD END sign!!!!
I'm guessing 20 below zero in downtown Deer Park. If the Deer Park Pine was in existence at that time that makes it 30 below zero in the cut shop. Dave Jones, railroad historian states, "This photo is remarkable in many ways. First of all it is a great action railroad photograph taken between 1910 and 1920. Because cameras were so big and cumbersome, most railroad pictures were just scenes in rail yards. This one is of a moving train in the dead of winter." The depot is the original Spokane Falls and Northern depot before the addition from Circle, WA was added on in 1919/20. The train is probably Great Northern #256 (Westbound Northbound that left Spokane at 8:55 AM and went through Deer Park at 10:02 arriving at Marcus at 12:55 PM. The train in the back ground is probably a frieght train. Another interesting thing is the number of people waiting at the station. This may have been normal for Deer Park, but that many folks standing in the cold makes me believe it may have been a special event. Perhaps it may have been a WW 1 troop train bring boys back from the war. It just seems like an awful lot of people wanting to go to Marcus, but we may never know. The water tank is the original 25,000 gallon tank which was replaced in 1920.
A Shay Locomotive, doing what it was designed to do. Pulling rail car loads of logs, freshly cut from remote timber stands and deliver to Mill ponds, soon to be sawed into dimention lbr.
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