Steam & Excursion > As The Steam Era Wore On, These Locomotives Were Purchased!

By the 1940's the writing was begining to be on the wall that the days of steam motive power would be over in the relatively near future.  While the War delayed the development of new diesel motive power a few years, once it was over, locomotive manufacturers began turning their attention in that direction and away from steam power.  The mere fact of the War created it's own problem for railroads who needed repair parts for their steam locomotives.

Loggers made such hard use of thier geared locomotives that they needed to insure a steady supply of repair parts for this locomotives.  With the War demands limiting the availabilty of these parts from the factories that were now turning out War goods, loggers had to be innovative to keep their fleet of geared locomotives running.

The Pacific Lumber Co. of Scotia, California came up with a solution that was used by many operators of the era.  They purchased this 2-truck Shay simply as a parts source for TPL's own fleet of 2-truck Shays.  Whe the Hammond Lumber Company of nearby Samoa, California announced they no longer needed their 1907-built Shay #1, The Pacific Lumber Co. was quick to buy it and ship it to Scotia where we see it in May, 1942.

While she was never intended to operate for TPL she did still provide a much needed source of parts for the other Shays of TPL that kept them running through the war and inteo the early 1950's.

Martin



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 01/14/21 03:35 by LoggerHogger.

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Great to see the one round Lima builder's plate on the engineer's side, just like you told me!!!

Ron