The “Crosby” — Burleigh’s Shay Locomotive
“A Novel Railway in South Florida,” drawn by G. W. Breck. Harper’s Weekly, 15 June 1895, page 567. Via Internet Archive. Public domain.[harpers-1895-novelty]
What it was
A Shay geared locomotive built by the Lima Locomotive Works of Ohio. Shays were designed for logging railroads: geared rather than rod-driven, slow, powerful at low speed, and able to work over rough, lightly built, uneven track that would derail a conventional locomotive. That tolerance is exactly why the machine could be walked across twenty-three miles of Florida scrub on loose timber, and why it could later run on rails made of wood.
Harper’s Weekly, writing in June 1895, calls it “one of their twelve-ton Shay locomotives” and gives its wheels an eight-inch tread.[harpers-1895-novelty]
Builder’s record
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Builder | Lima Locomotive Works, Lima, Ohio |
| Shop number | 469 (the 423rd Shay built) |
| Built | 17 November 1894 |
| Class | A 10-2 |
| Empty weight as built | 16,000 lb |
| Built for | The Florida Development Company (Oliver M. Crosby’s own company) |
| Recorded as | Florida Development Co. #5, “ANNA”, Avon Park, Florida |
| Later owner | A. V. Miller, Nida (Cass), West Virginia |
| Disposition | Scrapped |
All of the above is from an enthusiast-compiled construction roster, which also records that the engine was “shipped to Bowling Green FL and over nine days, moved 23 miles cross country to Avon Park, over wood rail beams relaid in front as the loco advanced.”[shay-roster-469]
The name
The two sources disagree. Harper’s Weekly, on the spot in 1895, calls it the Crosby. The construction roster calls it Anna.[harpers-1895-novelty][shay-roster-469]
The Crosby name now makes plain sense. The roster’s own buyer of record, the Florida Development Company, was Oliver M. Crosby’s company — he is named as its president in the local newspaper — so the engine carried the name of the man who founded the town and paid for it. A renaming, or a difference between the builder’s book and local usage, would account for Anna; neither has been established. For interpretive labels, Crosby is the right choice for the Florida years, with Anna noted as the roster name.
The weight discrepancy
The magazine says twelve tons; the roster gives sixteen thousand pounds, or eight tons, empty. These are not necessarily in conflict. Nominal class rating, empty weight, and weight in working order with water and fuel aboard were three different numbers in nineteenth-century practice, and popular accounts rarely say which one they mean.[harpers-1895-novelty][shay-roster-469]
What it did
It hauled logs to Burleigh’s steam sawmill on Lake Brentwood, and it worked the wooden-railed line of the Avon Park Transportation Company — rails of 4x8 timber laid straight in the sand without cross-ties, joined by wooden fish-plates and eighteen-inch wooden pins.[harpers-1895-novelty] The technology was unusual but not unique; the Smoak Tramway in South Carolina ran a seven-ton locomotive over wooden rail from 1884 to 1890.[smoak-tramway]
Where it is now
It does not survive. The roster records it passing to a West Virginia owner and eventually being scrapped, with no date given for either event.[shay-roster-469] No museum in Florida is known to hold it or any part of it.
The only known image
Despite extensive searches across digital archives, no photograph of this locomotive or its wooden railway has been found. The G. W. Breck illustration “A Novel Railway in South Florida,” published in Harper’s Weekly on 15 June 1895, remains the only known visual documentation of the locomotive in existence. It is in the public domain and available in a digitized scan.[harpers-1895-novelty]
References
- harpers-1895-novelty — Harper’s Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 2008. A Novelty Among Railroads. 15 June 1895. harpers-weekly-1895-novelty-among-railroads.md
- shay-roster-469 — shaylocomotives.com. Lima Shay Shop Number 469 factsheet. 22 February 2020. https://www.shaylocomotives.com/data/factsheet/sn-469.htm
- smoak-tramway — Wikipedia. Smoak Tramway. 30 August 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoak_Tramway
Related
- John C. Burleigh
- Avon Park Transportation Company
- Finding: Burleigh’s locomotive was scrapped and does not survive
- Reference: Harper’s Weekly, 15 June 1895
- Finding: The 1895 wooden railroad route and extent of track
- Finding: No surviving photograph of the Avon Park wooden railway is known
Where this comes from
- Evidence
- single-source — One source. Treat as reported, not established.
- Review
- unverified — Drafted from sources but not yet checked by a volunteer.
- Rights
- society
Sources
- Harper's Weekly, Vol. 39, No. 2008, A Novelty Among Railroads (1895)
- shaylocomotives.com, Lima Shay Shop Number 469 factsheet (2020)
- Wikipedia, Smoak Tramway (2026)
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