A three-truck narrow-gauge Shay engine is heading back to California. West Side Lumber Co. 12 was recently acquired by the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad from the Colorado Railroad Museum. 

The three-foot-gauge locomotive was built by Lima Locomotive Works in 1927 and operated for many years in California. During the preservation era, it moved east to Colorado, where it ran on the Georgetown Loop Railroad in the 1980s and 1990s. It eventually found a home at the Colorado Railroad Museum in Golden. 

In February, the locomotive was loaded onto a truck in Golden for the trip west. The Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad operates within Sierra National Forest south of Yosemite National Park. It has two other former West Side Shays, Nos. 10 and 15. The railroad said they hope to have the locomotive in service this year. 

—Justin Franz