Shay Locomotive

While in Denver at the Railroad museum  (which is cool, BTW)  As we were walking around in the snow, I saw this locomotive, which was completely different from the usual loco.  I took the camera from the LOML and walked over to get a good look at it  (while she stayed where the snow was not as deep, thinking to herself. uhhh who cares!)

It may be kind of hard to see from this picture, but this locomotive is completely different from others out there.  It does not use a piston to drive the wheels, it uses gears!

There are vertical pistons on the side of the locomotive

that drives a shaft

that drives the wheels via gearing!

and whats cool is, it drives all the wheels,  from the front of the loco all the way to the back of the tender.  So in this case, the heavier the loco is, the better traction it gets and the better it will pull and climb

The one I saw in Denver was number 14, according to what I found on-line (because of course when I came back I had to look up what is was, and how it worked, and where they were used, and all sorts of other information that I think is cool!) Number 12 was also there somewhere, but I did not see it

This particular loco is a Class C because it has 3 pistons and 3 trucks...

Here's the wiki page on it
yes Alex, I"ll take things no one cares about for 100 please


DD