An old tale said that Henry Ford had acquired a Shay locomotive for his Dearborn collection, but did not like the look of the off-center boiler, so had his mechanics rebuild it with a boiler centered on the frame. Here are the first photos I've ever seen of it. Anyone know its final fate?

http://www.ngdiscussion.net/cgi-bin/NGD ... read=93719

It is odd to see a Shay with the boiler centered on the frame! I wonder how they rebalanced everything. Isn't the boiler being offset is supposed to counterbalance the cylinders?

The common answer is to balance the weight of the cylinders. But, I think another aspect is fitting the clyinders and plumbing into the clearance evelope next to the horizontal centerline of the boiler - a problem that Climax and Heisler did not have. There are manifolds between the cylinders and boiler to service the cylinders that are not very wide. I am not sure if these were somehow modified / re-routed to allow another foot or so to allow the boiler to shift to the right.

The pictures (in the link) did not clearly show how much - if at all - the cylinders were moved outside of the line of the cab wall on the engineer's side.

The engine was not for the Dearborn collection, but rather for use by the factory's plant railroad.

In Michael Kock's book The Shay Locomotive: Titan of the Timber (1971) the two 3/4 views of the left and right sides of the locomotive are reproduced with the credit line of P.E. Percy Collection; these are on pages 340 and 341.

The two captions read:

and the one for the left side reads:

C/N 2640 was built January 1913 for Marshall Butters Lumber Co. of Michigan. So it came to Ford Motor Co. in the second-hand market. I don't know what happened to it.

Here's the page form Shaylocomotives.com

http://www.shaylocomotives.com/data/dataframe.htm

Ford evidently acquired it for his Upper Pennisula plant in Iron Mountain. The key is "For: Michigan Iron, Land & Lumber Co. #2, Iron Mountain, MI ". Located in Kingsford (in essence right next door to Iron Mountain), Ford made parts there, including most of the wooden frames and running boards for most of his early "model" cars. After that, Ford produced most of the bodies for the woody station wagons there. Interestingly enough, Ford was doing receycling at his plants long before "Green" was cool. The plants is probably best known for making the CG-4As gliders during World War II, however.



Below, from Iron Mountain's official website:

"Henry Ford had been eyeing the reserves of iron and timber in the Upper Peninsula since 1912. He contacted Edward G. Kingsford to express interest in acquiring raw materials for his factories. Kingsford, the husband of Ford's cousin, Minnie Flaherty, was a real estate agent and owned a Ford dealership in the area.

The Ford Motor Company had plans to locate a sawmill and parts plant in the Upper Peninsula to manufacture the wooden components for Ford automobiles. E. G. Kingsford facilitated the purchase of 313,447 acres of land for Ford and in 1920 construction began, employing more than 3,000 in the first year. On December 29, 1923, the charter for the newly formed Village of Kingsford was approved. By 1925, employment supporting the Ford Motor Company expansion to Dickinson County peaked at 7,500 workers.

Henry Ford's influence in Kingsford was vast and enduring. Ford sought affordable, modern housing for his employees and constructed over 100 homes in what is now known as the Ford Addition. Many other landmarks bear his name such as the Ford Airport, Ford Dam, Ford Clubhouse, Ford Hospital, Ford Park and Ford Commissary.

Henry Ford's world class facility in Kingsford was the jewel of his empire during that era. The production of the "Woody" station wagon bodies and the conversion to glider production during World War II highlighted Ford's accomplishments in Kingsford. To make use of the waste wood generated by the sawmill, a chemical plant was constructed and in operation by 1924. The chemical plant reclaimed, from every ton of scrap wood, a variety of saleable byproducts. The 610 pounds of charcoal reclaimed per ton was manufactured into briquettes and sold, known as Ford Charcoal Briquettes. Ford sold the plant to Kingsford Chemical in 1961."

TJG

The loco appears to have finished up in Brazil.

In "Brazilian Steam Album IV - North and South" by Charles Small (Canton Ohio 1990) there is a chapter titled "Fordlandia". To establish a supply of rubber for tyres a rubber plantation was developed near the Tapajos river in the Amazon basin. A 36" gauge railroad was built to haul cleared lumber to a sawmill. Lima 2640 was despatched there to work the line in 1931. A few years later synthetic rubber was developed and Ford no longer needed his own natural rubber source. Apparently no one was interested in purchasing the plantation so the whole lot including the railroad and the shay were given away to "the Brazilians".

The loco was photographed at the Sorocaba Rly shop in 1946 after conversion to metre gauge. It had possibly been used on railway construction work prior to this. Small reported that he had no knowledge of what happened to the loco after this. He suggested it was probably cut up as no further useful work could be found for it.

Jim.

This is kind of an interesting thread. I can't help thinking that if a model railroader had made such a locomotive, he would have been laughed off the face of the earth! A Shay with a centered boiler; how ridiculous!!

Les