The “Samson” and its two sisters were among the first steam locomotives in Canada. They had been ordered from Hackworth in Durham for the Albion mines in Nova Scotia. In May 1839 they arrived disassembled by ship in Canada and were then taken to their destination and assembled.

The three coupled axles were driven by vertical cylinders. The boiler had a return flue, meaning the firebox and chimney were both at the front. Thus, the positions of driver and fireman were at opposite ends.

Despite its primitive design, the “Samson” remained in regular service with the Albion Mines until 1867, during which time it also had to pull passenger trains. Up until 1885, it was used to assist other locomotives when needed and had a higher tractive effort than more modern, faster locomotives. In 1883 it made a trip to the Chicago Railroad Fair.

Only in 1893 it was rescued from the junkyard and preserved with a passenger car by the Baltimore & Ohio until it came back to Canada in 1927. Today it can be seen in the museum in Stellarton, Nova Scotia. This makes it the oldest surviving locomotive in Canada and also is almost in its original condition.

The “Edward Patterson” was built in May 1872 by Baldwin with the works number 2819 for the Ashland Iron Co. in Kentucky. It later came to Maryland Steel. It was a small two-axle saddle tank locomotive that was nevertheless powerful thanks to its small drivers. Locomotives in this size were built by several manufacturers and were used from the second half of the 19th century in large numbers by industrial, agricultural and forestry operators. In many places, they replaced draught animals, which increased transport capacity and reduced costs.

The largest type among the Heisler locomotives was the 90-12-40. This meant a service weight of 90 short tons, twelve wheels and a wheel diameter of 40 inches. With this, an additional tender was stored on a third, two-axle bogie, which was also connected to the drive shaft. Although Charles L. Heisler's patent originally included four-cylinder locomotives, the largest locomotives were also built with two cylinders and an increased boiler pressure of 200psi. The maximum train weight was around 600 tons on a gradient of two percent and 225 tons at five percent. In theory, up to 4,000 tons were possible on the flat, but these geared locomotives were not intended for the flat country.

A surviving example of the large design is the standard gauge number 6 of the Cass Scenic Railroad. The latter operates an eleven mile long, very hilly line in the Allegheny Mountains in West Virginia, which was built in 1901. On the Cass Scenic Railroad, the Heisler, built in 1929, is the only one of its kind, while the other engines consist of a Climax and otherwise only Shays. Today, like the rest of the fleet, it is still owned by the state of West Virginia, but is now used in Durbin by the operating company Durbin and Greenbrier Valley Railroad. The locomotive was originally built for the Meadow River Lumber Company, which at the time operated one of the largest sawmills in the world.

One of the standard models of the Shay built in larger numbers was the class B in the version with a service weight of about 50 short tons. Like all B, C and D class models, they had three cylinders. Some of the B-50-2 model locomotives already had a boiler pressure of 220 psi, while most others were still operated at 200 psi. In the meantime, the gear parts on the right side of the locomotives were covered to protect them from dirt while working in the forest. Curb weight was 85,800 pounds for early examples and approached 99,000 pounds for locomotives from the mid-20's.

The Lake Independence Lumber Company in Michigan operated a total of five B-50-2s in addition to one B-42-2. Two of these had been built in 1910 and 1911 for other logging companies and came to this company later. Two more had been built directly for the Lake Independence Lumber Co. in 1914 and 1925 and an identical 1923 example had been purchased from Lima stocks. All five were resold in the 1920s, four of them to the Brunswick Lumber Company.

The last four steam engines the McCloud River Railroad purchased in 1925 were oil-fired and made by ALCO. The numbers 20 and 21 from 1924 already had the wheel arrangement 2-6-2 and came from Baldwin. Then numbers 22 and 23 with the same wheel arrangement came from ALCO. The numbers 24 and 25, which were again delivered in the same year, had two inches larger coupling wheels and larger cylinders to compensate.

They were in service with logging operations until the mid-1950s, when steam operations ended at the McCloud. The number 25 was reactivated in 1962 for special trips. After operating on its original route with some interruptions until 2001, it joined the Oregon Coast Scenic Railroad in 2011 and is still in service today.

While the first Class A Climax locomotives still had a vertical boiler and vertical cylinders, the majority of the later classes A, B and C got a horizontal boiler and laterally mounted, horizontal or inclined cylinders. The machine last run as Hillcrest Lumber Company No. 9 was a two bogie class B example. Classified in the 50-tons category, it was actually quite a bit lighter. It used oil as fuel. The maximum train loads of locomotives in this class were over 2,000 tons on level ground and 130 tons on a six percent incline.

The locomotive was built in 1915 for the M.D. Olds Lumber Company in Michigan, but turned out to be too light for their purpose and was sold to Vancouver in Canada in 1917. There it was involved in the collection of wood for aircraft construction, but after the end of the war the demand collapsed and led to another sale. After another change of ownership, it finally came to the Hillcrest Lumber Company, where it served from 1936 to 1968. It was then used a few more times for special trips and today it is on display at the British Columbia Forest Discovery Center in Duncan.

The smallest design of the Shay, referred to as Class A, was available in different sizes between 6 and 24 tons. One of the oldest engines had the serial number 131 and was built in 1885 for the logging company T.L. Hackney in Texas. It had a service weight of nine short tons and was built for a gauge of 36 inches. The boiler was still arranged vertically and instead of a driver's cab there was only a large roof without side panels. After its service life at T.L. Hackney it came to the Rusk Iron Works, also in Texas. 

The “Olomana” is a small tank locomotive shipped to Hawaii from Baldwin in 1883 and used by the Waimanalo Sugar Co. to haul sugar cane from the plantations to the refinery. It is generally considered the third self-propelled vehicle in Hawaii. It had the wheel arrangement 0-4-2T and a saddle tank. The initially coal-fired locomotive was converted to oil-firing in 1928 after an unsuccessful attempt to use sugar cane as fuel. In 1944 it and its sisters were retired and replaced with trucks.

The locomotive only became famous after it returned to the US mainland in 1948. It came to Hollywood and was used on the private Grizzly Flats Railroad. In 1952 and 1953 it was first restored and converted to wood firing. In the following time it was operated several times by Walt Disney and influenced him noticeably. In 1977 it was donated to the Smithsonian Museum, from where it came to the Railroad Museum of Pennsylvania in Strasburg in 1999.

The Sugar Pine Lumber Co., founded in 1923, was a logging railroad in the Sierra Nevada in California that called itself the “crookedest railroad ever built”. Nevertheless, they used locomotives with multiple driving axles in one frame. This started with four 2-8-2 saddle tank locomotives built by ALCO. In need for even more power, they even ordered a 2-10-2 saddle tank in 1927.

Given the number 5 and called “Minaret”, it must have been the heaviest saddle tank locomotive ever and most likely also the only 2-10-2ST. After the SPL shut down its operations in 1935, No. 5 was used by several construction contractors. One was the Mason-Walsh-Atkinson-Kier & Co., which used in in the construction of the Grand Coulee Dam and added an additional tender. The last operator was H. J. Kaiser Co., which scrapped it in 1947.