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‘Shay’ Nambour Museum |
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My visit to The Workshops railway museum on 22 October 2006
found ‘Shay’ sitting on a flatcar in a storage building.
(Two sections of the red side rods had been removed,
presumably for transport.)
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Builder |
Lima
Locomotive Works, |
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Builder’s Number & Year |
2091 of 1914 |
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Wheel Arrangement |
A-Type (2-truck, 2 cylinders) |
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The
Mapleton Tramway was a 2' gauge line built to connect
the Moreton Central Mill at Nambour with sugar cane fields under development
at Dulong. The route passed through difficult terrain with steep gradients
and tight curves, rising from the coastal plain to the town of Mapleton, 400
metres above sea level in the Blackall Range. Accordingly, two small A-type
Shay geared locomotives were ordered from the Lima
Locomotive Works, Ohio to work this mountain climbing line; these locomotives
were Lima Builder's Numbers 2091 of 1908 and 2800 of 1914 and were given the
names ‘Dulong’ and ‘Mapleton’ respectively. Although
intended as a sugar cane line, the area around Dulong proved to be poorly
suited to cane growing. However, the Mapleton Tramway continued to function
as a common-carrier railway, loading timber, fruit, passengers and mail for
conveyance from Mapleton down the Blackall Range to Nambour. The
Mapleton Tramway closed in 1944 by which time the two Shay locomotives were
in poor condition. In 1949 the best components of both ‘Mapleton’ and ‘Dulong’
were combined to form one good locomotive for use at the Moreton Mill,
Nambour, while most of the remains of the other Shay were scrapped. The
remaining locomotive became known simply as ‘Shay’ and lasted in service at
Nambour until 1960. Fortunately, it was saved for preservation, being displayed
at the entrance to Moreton Mill for many years. My visit to Nambour on 27
January 2004 found ‘Shay’ still plinthed at the Mill entrance under a basic
weather roof. Following
the closure and subsequent demolition of Moreton Mill, ‘Shay’ was relocated
in 2006 to The Workshop railway museum at Ipswich for a period of storage. Nambour
Shire Council is now the owner of ‘Shay’ and in 2010 it returned to Nambour
for exhibition at the Nambour Museum. Here it is receiving a thorough static
restoration by volunteers, including replacement of corroded cabsides and
smokebox. An
excellent resource for Shay locomotives is the Shaylocomotives.com
site, which lists this loco as b/n 2800 ‘Mapleton’. As an
interesting aside, the spare 2-foot gauge trucks from the second Mapleton
Tramway Shay have also survived and are being used in the restoration of one the
two A. D. Hampton Shays (b/n 2097)
at the Illawarra Light Railway Museum in NSW. |
A second view of "Shay" at The Workshops railway
museum, Ipswich on 22 October 2006.
‘Shay’ is a 2-cylinder machine; this view shows the
vertical cylinders and crankshaft.
This photo is from the collection of John Hurst (with
permission) and show ‘Shay’ on display at Nambour in July 1978.
These 2' gauge Shay bogies are
being used in the rebuild of Lima 906
at the ILRMS, Albion Park.
They are the surviving components of the
second Mapleton Tramway Shay.
My thanks to Jason Gundlach for providing this photo.
References
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a |
www.shaylocomotives.com
website, viewed 7
June 2014. |
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b |
Light
Railways - Australia's Magazine of Industrial & Narrow
Gauge Railways', Number
189, June 2006. Published
by Light Railway Research Society of Australia Inc. |
Page updated: 10 August 2026
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