Railways

A History in Drawings

By Christopher Valkoinen, 2021.

Hardbound, illus., 10x13-inches, 306 pages, $75.00.

Thames & Hudson
Availability list at https://www.thamesandhudsonusa.com/books/railways-hardcover (try Amazon, Barnes and Noble).

According to this book, the National Railway Museum in York, England, has some one million railway plans or drawings on file and the author is involved in digitizing them. The book has some 300 illustrations, 108 are replicas of actual plans. It is organized into seven categories such as Two Centuries of Locomotives, The Railway Passenger, Freight on the Railways, Railway Workers, The Railway Workshop of the World, Railways at War, and Building the Railways.

After a detailed timeline beginning in 1560 and ending in 2008, the book contains text, photos and reproductions of prototype plans and drawings of mostly English railways.

The first section on locomotives begins with a drawing of a Stockton & Darlington Horse Dandy where a horse, walking on a treadmill, powered the locomotive. This is followed by drawings of the first steam locomotive built by Richard Trevithick way back in 1804. This is followed by more drawings of early cars and locomotives including Stephenson’s Rocket and drawings showing the development of steam, electric and Diesel locomotives in England.

Railway Passenger Cars follows, including a Blackpool tram car, and a hearse carriage once used on a railway that ran to a cemetery. All it hauled was coffins and mourners. Freight on the Railways has some early Festiniog 2-foot slate car plans and drawings for a dog car and a horse car. Railway Workers has plans for signal cabins, workers trollies and a detailed plan for an artificial leg (just in case). The Railway Workshop of the World has plans of the John Bull that came to America and plans for locomotives and cars sent to other foreign railways.

Railways at War is interesting for the drawing of a modified Ford Model T converted into a rail car, an ambulance train car, an armored train, a Euston Station war memorial, a proposed air raid shelter under Waterloo Station and a landing barge.

Building the Railways has a wonderful selection of decorated survey maps of early railways and later passenger terminals such as Waterloo. There is also a Glossary, list of further reading, picture credits, acknowledgements, and an Index. A book of this scope is hard to summarize. It is full of facts, a readable text, photos, and all those wonderful plans and drawings. I am amazed at how detailed these drawings were. Every pipe and rivet are shown. But my favorite railway, one that never took hold, is on page 38. It seems that Mr. Yorath Lewis invented and built a demonstration railway called the Never-Stop Railway at the 1924 British Empire Expedition. There is a plan for one of this railway’s carriages. It was propelled by a long screw that drew the cars along. At stations the screw slowed the train so passengers could just step off and on. It ran faster between stations. No crews or signals, just that electrically powered screw. But alas it never caught on. Such are the many stories of locomotive and rolling stock history covered in this monumental book.
-Bob Brown.

Ron’s Books
P.O. Box 714
Harrison, NY 10528
914/967-7541
ronsbooks@aol.com
www.ronsbooks.com

Ron's Books continues to sell reprints if prototype a catalogs by Silver Lake Images, LLC. In their Manufacturer’s Catalog Archive. Each catalog sells for $35.00.

H.K. Porter Locomotives was the most exciting to me. It is 100 pages long and full of Porter fireless locomotives. They came in all shapes and sizes. After an introduction about the virtues of Porter fireless locomotives they are shown at work and in catalog pages with illustrations and specifications. There seem to be hundreds of them and you should have no problem finding inspiration.

Browning Locomotive Cranes Volume 2: 1920, is 54 pages long and includes several plans for four-wheel and eight-wheel cars. There are dozens of photos showing cranes at work in industrial situations. The first chapter has several photos of the various parts of a locomotive crane and will help you build one.

Pressed Steel Car Company Volume 1: Freight Cars, is 57 pages long. This catalog concentrates on standard gauge gondolas, and hopper cars. There are two steel narrow gauge side unloading gondolas shown, and a few foreign four wheel gondolas. Great information for standard gauge freight car modelers.

Railway Electrification Volume 1: New Haven, is 34 pages long and describes heavy electric overhead wiring along with heavy electric locomotives. Full of electrical diagrams and photos of the New Haven’s electric lines and equipment including power generating plants, and right of way.

All four catalogs are printed on high quality paper with excellent photo and drawing reproductions. Not all of them will appeal to everyone but having them available is very valuable to railfans and model builders.
-Bob Brown.

The Shay Locomotive

An Illustrated History

By Richard A. Henderson, John C. Benson,
George R. Kadelak and Steve Hauff, 2021
White River Productions
877-787-2467
info@WhiteRiverProductions.com.shop
WhiteRiverProductions.com.

Hardcover, 113/8 inches tall by 97/8 inches wide, 640 pages, approximately 51/2 pounds, $99.95 plus shipping. Nine hundred eighty-four B/W photos and 82 color photos with captions, 101 drawings, 109 illustrations, 16 lists, and 2 paintings. In addition to text, there are 156 pages of data by shop number, 49 pages of owner/operator data, 35 pages of locomotive location by geography and 10 pages of Bibliography.

This is a massive railroad book. It is organized in three parts with photos, illustrations, and drawings throughout.

Part One has nine Chapters with Chapter 1 covering Ephraim Shay, the man and his work, Chapter 2 presenting the history and evolution of the Lima Machine Works as affected Shay production, Chapter 3 is the basics of the Shay locomotive, Chapter 4 highlights interesting ideas that were concepts, one-off builds, conversions, rotary snowplows, and the Pacific Coast models among other things. Chapter 6 describes how Shays were marketed, sold, and serviced. These five chapters provide a great context for better appreciating the photos and illustrations in the book.

Chapter 5 is titled “Mishaps: This Isn’t How We Had It Planned” and it contains stories and many photos of wrecks, a number of which show Shay underside detail which is normally hard to view. Chapter 7 titled “Alien Shays: Copies and Conversions” briefly cover Shays manufactured by anyone other than Lima, including several more Shays built by Ephraim Shay for his use. It is noted Ephrain never owned a Shay built by Lima. Chapter 8 contains 45 pages of photos with captions of Shay locomotives surviving into the 21st Century, while Chapter 9 has 126 pages of people, machine and industry photos with captions placing Shay locomotives in their natural habitats.

Part Two has 3 Lists. First is a Lima Shop Numbers List, the second is an Owners/Operators List, and the third is a Geographical List.

The Shop Numbers List starts with an explanation of where the information in the list came from and why is it not possible to assemble a perfect list, the types of data the authors chose to include in the list, the evolution of Lima’s numbering system. For this table the authors chose to use the term Shop Number (S/N). Shop numbers in the list run from No. 6 (7-20-1880) to No. 3354 (5-14-1945) with some gaps which are addressed in three tables at the front of the List. Of the 2,767 (or 2,768 depending on data source) Shay locomotives built, the authors were able to include one or more photos of 701 of those Shop Numbers. The photos cover a wide S/N range from No. 6 (7-20-1880) to 3354 (5-14-1945) providing a good sampling of what Shay locomotives looked like and how they evolved over time. For those S/Ns in the List for which there is one or more photos in the book, the page number(s) where the photo(s) is located is included in that S/N line item. Conversely, the S/N is included in the captions of all the Shay locomotive images (except those used as part of chapter title pages) making it easy to look up particulars on the locomotive in the Shop Number List. This is really convenient.

The Shays by Owner/Operator List is an alphabetical list with each entry being paired with one or more Shop Numbers. Those S/Ns allow one to look up the entry in the S/N List and see if there is a photo that might be of interest. There are two columns of Owner – S/N data per page on 49 pages. The range of names is amazing, and if I were in need of the company or railroad name for a modeling project I was working on, this list would definitely be consulted. At the end of this list are a page and one half of Shay photos with captions describing how Shays were transported and delivered to their owners, or perhaps new owners.

The last list is Shays by Geography. This list is again alphabetical, by Country, then State or Territory. The United States and Territories account for the majority of the entries, followed by 27 other countries who received Shay locomotives from the Lima factory. Each page contains three columns for Location — S/N pairing, with the location column containing the city or town. It appears the country, state or territory names are those in use at the time when the locomotives were delivered. As in other lists, the S/N allows one to look up the S/N list for more information and the existence of any related photos in the book.

Part Three is Technical Detail presented in the form of three Appendices. The first, Appendix A, is about Patents, how Lima used them, and short introductions to twelve men who filed a number of patents related to the Shay locomotive. This brief text is followed by 14 pages of captioned Patent Illustrations, which contain the inventor’s name. The captions explain what the invention was and if it was used in the construction of a locomotive. This material is interesting to read through and may leave one wishing a few more pages of patents could have been included.

Appendix B contains a brief introduction to the drawings Lima used to build Shays. The authors state that between 300 and 400 hundred drawings were used for each Shay, and that roughly 20,000 of the original 30,000 plus drawings still exist. The following 29 pages contain un-retouched images of original drawings to give the reader a taste of what this documentation is like.

Appendix C presents statistical and technical information in the form of charts. The first is Shay Class Number Systems as listed in Lima’s catalogs issued by date with each year broken down by major class such as Class A, Class B, Class C and Class D and number of cylinders and cylinder size presented as a line item with an associated class number. This data is reported for years 1882 to 1929 with a big jump to 1945. Another chart presents the same type of information for Shay classes not used in catalogs. This is followed by a small chart of proposed Shay designs which were not built and a chart of mechanical designs (internal combustion engines) that were built. A four-page chart called First, Last, Largest, Smallest includes categories of General; Weight; Boiler; Cabs; Domes & Headlights; Trucks & Line Shaft; Engine; Valves & Cylinders; Frame and End Beams; and lastly, Plates. Each of these has sub-categories. This chart is fun to read and really shows up changes and trends over the years. Another page is a listing of interesting factoids under the headings of general information and some unusual Shays. The last Chart in Appendix C presents the First, Last and Total Number of Locomotives by Class, and the last page in this appendix is a reproduction of information presented to Baldwin Locomotive Works salesmen about costs and efficiency, that Lima got a hold of and ran their own calculations of what it would take to match Baldwin.

A ten-page Bibliography is followed by a one-page Epilogue, and the last numbered page is a look at S/N 122, 1884, the oldest known survivor — Michigan-California Lumber Company No. 2.

There is no doubt this book was a labor of love for the four authors, and White River Productions did a wonderful job with the publication. Our ability to retain railroad history is better off because of their efforts. If you are a Shay enthusiast, you will want to add this book to your library even if you have the previously published books on Shays (and those of similar machines). If you have a passing interest in Shays, or just want to know more about them, this would be a great first book to obtain. The title The Shay Locomotive, An Illustrated History is definitely appropriate.
-Dave Adams.