As a model railroad enthusiast, I recently came across a site from a fellow modeling a branch of the Milwaukee in the Pacific Northwest. He also had a couple of clips from a theatrical film from the 1950s, called "Timberjack." His YouTube clips follow; this looks like an interesting movie.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLrY_G0w ... er&list=UL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XewFaa2DjVQ

Of course, some movie reviewers might not agree that this is an interesting flick:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0048726/

Bah, what do they know when we love to see steam!

I docent on that locomotive at The Historical Museum at Fort Missoula. She's the oldest surviving and only coal burning Willie built. Started life as Western Lumber Co. #3. in 1923. They claim all the Willies were superheated but that is not true! Notice the slide valves. After customer complaints, the company installed piston valves on all superheated engines and continued that practice, something rival Lima didn't.
The scenes in the movie were filmed just down the road from where I live in Bonner, MT. There is some talk of our local NRHS group giving the locomotive a paint job and perhaps looking over the running gear. I can get about 20 kids in the cab at a time and they love to ring the bill. She's located next to a working steam sawmill powered by a 80hp Case traction engine so I'm guessing she feels right at home in her well deserved retirement.

"Rival Baldwin"????? At their "Ohio plant"?? Are you missing a diamond?

I didn't know a Shay or Shay clone could go as fast as the engine in the movie.....

Ephriam Vauclain
Allen County, O.

Fixed. First it was Shay but that's a type of locomotive not a company. Late night typing.

The speed of that thing in the movie impressed me, too; it's interesting to look at the comments below the video clips that suggest the engineers ran these engines much faster than normal for the camera guys, and that it may have been hard on the locomotives.

There are video clips of the "Shay races" at the railroad museum in Sacramento, Ca., that show some amazing speeds, but these are without cars.

One of my very regular peeves at the movie industry is that steam sound is usually horribly syncronized. Most of the time the exhaust chuffs are too fast for what is visible on the screen. In this case, the exhaust sounds are too slow!

Couldn't find any internet video footage of the Sacramento Shay races (which were actually run as a type of time trial), but did find this link, which may be of interest here:

http://www.gearedsteam.com/index.html

This one may of interest, too:

http://loggingmallets.railfan.net/

Enjoy.

Wouldn't it be neat to see this Willie haul some logs for that sawmill? Hey, somebody shut off that alarm clock, I need my sleep! :-)

Did anyone notice in one of the clips, the shay started up and the movie guys dubbed in the sound of a standard steam loco chuffing-off with four beats per revolution? I guess they did that because the "roar" of the three cylinders would have been confusing to a non-railfan?

As close as we'll get, #2 coming home.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKI-AklqgJo

Thanks for posting this... it's simply beautiful.

Steve Hunter
Cardinal, Ontario

Is that a steam powered log loader at the other end of the train?

Prehaps it was back in the day but it currently sports what looks like a truck engine.

Thanks for the video clip, No. 2 is sweet (and this is coming from a fan of Superpower), but oh, how I wish you could get your own running too. . .guess I'm going to have to start playing that lottery, wonder if there is some way I can rig the game to win, get a nice big powerball. . .:-)

Here in the east, we have the Cass Scenic in West Virginia, and with its regular operations, there is a lot of material available on it.

First up, Cass Scenic No. 5, built in 1905 new for the Greenbriar, Cheat & Elk (Cass Scenic predecessor); this engine is very unusual for having always been a home road engine, for now over 100 years--and she had a pretty whistle at the time of this clip:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89TfUia3CLk

The oldest Shay at Cass, the aformentioned No. 5, teams up with the youngest Shay, Western Maryland 6 (1945) on a regular train to the top of Bald Knob, tackling an average grade of 5%, several sections in excess of 7% with a standing start on one of them (following the water stop at 5:00), two sections of 11%, curves as tight as 40 degrees, and two switchbacks. At that, one of the 11% sections is easier than it used to be; before it was rebuilt, it was 13%!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDJkzW7ligQ

The view is grand at the top:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xGgnVxp9sQ

Glad you have a sawmill, by the way--sadly, the one at Cass burned some years ago, and all that's left are rusting ruins.

Sometimes I think I live in the wrong time--and the bad part is, some other people have told me this is so. . .