The Sugar Pine Railroad: Saving the Shay Engine
Near Wawona, California
Just north of Oakhurst, at a wide spot in the pines called Fish Camp, sits one of the most unusual museums in the Sierra Nevada. The Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad preserves the last remaining pieces of the Madera Sugar Pine Lumber Company's narrow-gauge railroad system, which once threaded through miles of mountain forest in the early twentieth century. The lumber company cut timber from the upper Sierra and hauled it down to the mills using small-gauge tracks designed to navigate terrain too steep and curved for standard railroads.
When the logging era ended and the forest was largely exhausted, the railroad went quiet. What survived was preserved and opened to the public beginning in nineteen sixty-six. Today visitors ride behind a restored steam locomotive of the type called a Shay engine, designed specifically for steep mountain grades.
The Shay uses a mechanical arrangement unlike standard locomotives: its cylinders are mounted vertically on the side of the engine, connected by a system of gears and drive shafts that turn all the wheels simultaneously, allowing it to climb on lightweight track that would defeat a conventional engine. The lumber companies that built these mountains relied on Shay engines because nothing else could handle the terrain. A short ride on one is the closest most people will come to understanding how timber came down from the high Sierra.
