I already mentioned the Foster Brook and State Line Shay in a previous post. The little locomotive with Shop Number 3118, was built in May 1920 and is the only 2 foot Shay that’s still operational. It’s now owned by Doug Kuntz, who now operates it on his own private railway. The movie below, which was shot on the 9th of October 2011, has recently been uploaded to Youtube. Enjoy!

Just an old postcard of the Mapleton Tramway. It’s hard to estimate the exact location, but looks like it is the regular “up” tram preparing to leave Nambour. Visible behind “Dulong”  are the passenger & brake van and the covered wagon. The guard is just visible in his compartment of he brake van.

It ran every day except Sunday … it departed just after lunch and took two and a half hours to get from Nambour up to Mapleton. In it’s up service, it carried passengers, supplies, goods, mail and sawn timber. The tram was stabled up in Mapleton overnight and in the morning it would come down to Nambour with return passengers, mail, logs, sugar cane and if it was in season, oranges.

I always wondered if it would be possible to add sound to a small HOn30 layout. Wouldn’t it be great to hear the puffing sound of a small 13 ton Shay passing by? Unfortunately it will be hard to fit a speaker in an HOn30 locomotive. So, what options are there?

First of all, I should go digital … I know, it sounds a bit scary, as it means that I will have to fit DCC decoders in my models. With small decoders like the Digitrax DZ125 or the CT-Elektronik DCX74z, it should be possible and as you can see from the image above, the DZ 125 just fits in an N-scale Shay … so should definitely fit in mine. Furthermore, I will have to find some kind of “under-the-table” digital sound system, that will be able to handle the sound of my locomotives.

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