The Goldendale Sentinel, Goldendale, WA., April 2, 1964, page 1
FINAL EXCURSION RUN TO BE MADE BY SHAY LOCOMOTIVE
Klickitat county citizens and old-time railway buffs
will be given their last opportunity Saturday, April 4, to ride on the Shay
logging locomotive-powered train before the engines are retired from service
by the St. Regis Paper Company at Klickitat.
At press time Wednesday it was reported that tickets
were still available for the excursion over the 18-mile track from Klickitat
to the re-load station near the Leidl bridge on the Goldendale-Glenwood highway.
Cabooses and gondolas for the Saturday excursion will be furnished by the
S.P. & S. Railway and stops will be made along the way for photo fans.
The train will leave Klickitat at 11:30 a.m. and return
around 6 p.m. At the reload passengers will be treated to coffee and doughnuts
by members of the Goldendale Chamber of Commerce and tentative plans are
to take some of the visitors to scenic spots along the highway to Glenwood.
To commemorate the end of the Shay logging locomotive,
which will be replaced by logging trucks, the excursion is sponsored by the
St. Regis Paper Company and the Puget Sound Railway Historical Association.
Fare is $7 for adults and $5 for children. All proceeds from the trip will
be used to support the association's operating, non-profit railroad museum
at Snoqualmie.
The sponsoring groups, in their literature advertising
the event said:
"Logging railroads and Shay-geared locomotives have been
pretty much synonymous ever since the day back in the 1870s when Ephraim
Shay, a Michigan logger, had his famous brainstorm. Mr. Shay's steam locomotive,
instead of using rods to connect the cylinders to the wheels, used a line
shaft and bevel gears along the side of the engine. This produced a powerful
machine that could run on any old track. Top speed-"11 MPH an hour over the
edge of a cliff" -- somewhat less on the level.
"It's appropriate that the last 100 percent steam-powered
logging railroad in the west should use nothing but Shay's on its 18 miles
of track. However, this operation, which has for many years supplied all
the logs for the St. Regis Paper Company sawmill at Klickitat, Washington,
is being displaced this spring by diesel-powered logging trucks. The railroad
has lasted this long only because it is in such rugged country. There are
places in the bottom of the Klickitat River Canyon with the line is five
miles from the nearest road of any sort."
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© Jeffrey L. Elmer