MARCH/APRIL 2016
13
Visitors to the Little
River Railroad Museum
can see the Shay 2147
steam engine.
Little River
Railroad Museum
Learn the history of trains in
Tennessee
by Tom Miller,
Staff Writer
Nestled in the
foothills of the
Great Smokey
Mountains of Tennessee is a museum treasure well worth the visit
for anyone who enjoys the history
of railroading and the logging
industry.
James Abbott of Sevierville,
Tenn., a contract boilerman for
the Bear Creek Junction Railroad
in Robbinsville, N.C., gave life to
the Little River Railroad Museum.
Bear Creek planned to sell a Shay
2147 locomotive for scrap. Shay
2147 had particular historical significance to this logging community; it was the last existing Shay
to run at the Little River Lumber
Company. The locomotive was
the most widely used geared
steam locomotive. These locomotives were built to the patents of
Ephraim Shay (1839–1916), a
schoolteacher, Civil War hospital
clerk, civil servant, merchant,
railway owner and inventor who
has been credited with popularizing the concept of a geared
steam locomotive. Although the
design of Shay’s early locomotives
differed from later ones, there is
a clear line of development that
joins all Shays.
In the 1860s, Shay became a
logger. He wanted to devise a
better way to move logs to the mill
than on winter snow sleds. He
built his own tramway in 1875 on
a 2-foot, 2-inch (660 mm) gauge
track on wooden ties. This allowed
him to log all year round. Eventually Shay invented his locomotive.
In 1877 he developed the idea of
having an engine sit on a flat car
with a boiler, gears and trucks that
could pivot. The first Shay locomotive only had two cylinders
and the front truck was mounted
normally while the rear truck was
fixed to the frame and could not
swivel, much as normal drivers
on a locomotive. Shay centered
the 3-foot (914 mm) diameter by
5-foot (1,524 mm) tall boiler on
the car with the water tank over
the front trucks and the Crippen’s
engine mounted crossways over
the rear trucks.
Shay experimented first with
a chain drive from the engine
through the floor to the truck axle.
He soon found the chain drive
was not practical so he tried a
belt drive. It did not take long for
the idea to become popular. Shay
applied for and received a patent
for the basic idea in 1881. He patented an improved geared truck
for his Shay engines in 1901.
Visitors to the Little River Railroad Museum can see the Shay
2147 steam engine and a replica
of the Elkmont Post Office. Other
featured artifacts include a vintage
caboose L&N Class NE “Little
Woody,” two vintage flatcars, a
Frick traction steam engine, one
of the original “setoff ” houses
use