Steam & Excursion > Which Of These Locomotives Is More Rare May Surprise You!

Quite often, when one sees something written that mentions the Willamette geared engines turned out by the Willamette Iron & Steel Company of Portland, Oregon there is a mention of how rare these engines were due to the small number of them built. However they were not as rare as another famous logging lokie that we all know.

The birth of the Willamette was a direct assault on the Lima's near domination of the logging market with it's Shay locomotive. The Willamette design incorporated a number of features as standard equipment that could only be ordered from Lima as costly "extras" on the Shay. This gave the Willamette a means to begin taking locomotive customers away from Lima.

After seeing it's market share begin to erode for the first years of Willamette's production, Lima came back with it's answer to this threat in the form of it's Pacific Coast Shay model. This new product from Lima incorporated the upgrades offered by Willamette and some other features to put an end to the Willamette insurgence into the logging market.

Lima's introduction of the Pacific Coast Shay must have worked because in less than 2 year from the sale of the first Pacfic Coast Shay Willamette delivered it's very last locomotive to a buyer. But which one is more rare? The answer may surprise you.

Many know that Willamette delivered only 33 locomotives during the 7 years it was building geared locomotives. Of those 33, there are 6 of them remaining today with only one of those running, but one more under restoration.

However successful the Pacific Coast Shay was for Lima, there were only 27 of those engines built. Of those 27, there are only 5 left today and only one of those in operation.

There you have it, the numbers don't lie. We now know which of these 2 models is the rarer one.


Martin



Edited 4 time(s). Last edit at 06/20/18 04:14 by LoggerHogger.

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I didn't know the number of Pacific Coast Shays was fewer than the Willamettes. Now if only the Willamette photographer could have moved his camera slightly to show that No. 4 once had a number plate.

Interesting. I'd sure like to see the catalogs from these companies, and see what the options actually were, and how much each cost. I wonder what the sales pitches were from each of these companies too. I'd guess that the gauge and the weight were two of the major options, all the way to lettering and paint . Maybe pin striping available, but no automatic tranny, Mag. wheels. or back up cameras.

Thanks,

Craig Hanson
Vay, Idaho