July 27, 2026
Steam, schemes, and site slander
Shay Locomotives
Train nerds cheer the giant Shay archive while roasting its painfully old-school website
TLDR: A massive fan-made archive tracks thousands of Shay locomotives and says 116 of these rugged old steam engines still exist. Commenters loved the history and rideable survivors, but the biggest drama was everyone side-eyeing the website’s confusing, very old-school design.
A lovingly obsessive website about Shay locomotives — a quirky kind of steam engine built for rough hills, logging camps, and mining lines — has become a tiny internet spectacle. The site boasts 24,050+ search links, 1,700+ photos, a book, patent records, survivor lists, and enough train history to keep hardcore rail fans happily lost for hours. Out of 2,767 Shays built, the archive says 116 still survive, which instantly sent commenters into detective mode: where are they, can you still see them, and can you actually ride one today?
That curiosity quickly turned into the real show: the comments. One user had a wholesome nostalgia moment, saying the database felt like something their dad would have owned in book form. Another jumped straight into train geography, noting these aren’t the classic movie-style locomotives people expect in the American West, but beasts made for steep grades and rough tracks. Then came the globe-trotting flex: a commenter popped in to say Shays even ran in Australia on the colorful Newnes line, because apparently this rabbit hole has international lore too.
But the spiciest reaction? The website itself. One commenter absolutely dragged it as “borderline unreadable,” with the very online subtext of: incredible information, chaotic presentation. That’s the vibe here in a nutshell — people are fascinated by the machines, charmed by the deep archive, and lightly scandalized by a homepage that looks frozen in time. Meanwhile, another commenter swooped in with the ultimate fan-service answer: yes, you can still ride a Shay-powered train at Cass Scenic Railroad State Park. History lesson, travel tip, and comment-section drama all in one smoky package.
Key Points
- •The site presents a Shay locomotive research database with over 24,050 search links and more than 1,700 photos.
- •It includes historical and technical resources such as surviving Shay records, Lima patents, inventor information, and a Shay class system.
- •The page states that 2,767 Shay locomotives were built over 67 years under four company names, with 116 surviving.
- •Production figures are broken out by company name, including Lima Locomotive & Machine Co., Lima Locomotive Corporation, and Lima Locomotive Works, Inc.
- •The article provides a class breakdown of Shay locomotives by cylinder/truck configuration and corresponding speed ranges for Classes A, B, C, D, and a Special class.