Shay Locomotive No. 2005

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Shay Locomotive Number 2005. Now, most locomotives you'll ever see were built to run smooth and fast on level ground. But the forests of East Texas don't care about smooth and flat.

They've got hills, they've got mud, they've got track that winds through the timber like a snake looking for shade. And for country like that, you needed something a little different. Back in 1880, a man named Ephraim Shay patented it.

Vertical pistons, direct-gear drive. The kind of engine that could grip and crawl where a standard locomotive would spin its wheels and give up. This particular machine, Number 2005, thirty-six tons of it, rolled out of the Lima Locomotive and Machine Company in 1907.

Built for Behring Company of Texas. But it didn't stay with Behring long. W.

T. Carter and Bro. Lumber Company purchased it, and put it straight to work hauling timber out of the East Texas forests.

It ran the tram roads connecting forest to mill, first at Manning, then at Camden. And later it found itself on the Moscow, Camden and San Augustine Railroad, a line the Carter company owned outright. That engine earned its keep.

But sometime in the early nineteen twenties, the work slowed, or maybe the work moved on, and Number 2005 got parked on a siding at Camden. And there it sat. Decade after decade.

Sitting quiet on that siding while the world changed around it, while the timber industry transformed, while Camden itself faded into memory. It didn't move again until 1970, when somebody finally decided that thirty-six tons of 1907 history deserved better than a forgotten siding. They brought it here to Nacogdoches.

And that log car attached to it now, that came from the same era, used during the same period by the Angelina County Lumber Company. Two pieces of equipment from two different outfits, both survivors of the same rough and roaring age of East Texas timber. Parked together now, finally going nowhere, and that's exactly where they belong.

What the marker says

Vertical-piston drive and direct-gear design was patented, 1880, by Ephraim Shay. This 36-ton engine was built by Lima Locomotive and Machine Co., 1907, for Behring Co. of Texas, and soon purchased by W. T. Carter and Bro. Lumber Co. Carter used it first on tram roads from forest to mills at Manning and Camden, and later on the company-owned Moscow, Camden & San Augustine Railroad. In early 1920s, it was parked on a siding at Camden, where it remained until 1970, when it was brought here. Attached log car was used during same period by Angelina County Lumber Co. (1973)