Rick Henderson Celina TN Senior Editor, SLc

I am a retired Firefighter/Paramedic who for over 20 years now, has enjoyed all things Shay. After my early retirement due to 5 back injuries, two nearly fatal, I was able to devote a lot more time to my hobby of model railroading and learning more about Shays.

During this time we moved several times due to my wife's career in the military and I have had some interesting opportunities. I was manager of a hobby shop in Burke VA when large scale modeling was in it's roots in the US. Then people still did craft type hobbies instead of electronic or computer gaming. I also contracted to build railroad layouts for people.

While stationed in San Antonio TX, I was with the Texas Transportation Museum, spending three years as their Road Master. We laid a lot of 1:1 track including 5 turnouts and ran short tourist rides. I also helped form a Large Scale RR club there.

I've been modeling in 1:20n36 large scale now for about 15 years, mostly geared engines, eight of them Shays. This on-line book has kept me from my modeling however I recently joined the Chattanooga Live Steam club and spend two Saturdays a month building trestles and laying track in 7½" gauge, something I am really enjoying.

Why did I go to all this effort for free? I saw the book "The Shay Locomotive" by Michael Koch sell for $20 at a White Elephant table in 1982, the person checking it in actually put it under the table for himself. It took me a few years to find my own copy and cost me $125. Koch's book has sold for as much as $800 that I know of and is still hard to find. This site is my second Shay Locomotive site actually and the first to include ALL of Lima's Shays. I started it because anyone new in the hobby could not get current accurate information on Shays easily. I published this new site in April of 2000 and with the help of the staff of John Benson, George Kadelak and Dan Rowe it has grown ever since. We also benefit from the reader a great deal. There have been 100's of e-mail contacts with additional information, updates and some corrections.