That whistle of Shorty Maddux's had a strange sound. Going back to 1959, I always referred to the sound as sounding "like a love-sick moose". The sound can be heard on a 1958 audio recording of noting but the West Side made by the long extinct "Railroad Record Club" which weas somewhere in the mid=west. They put it out on a 10" vinyl 33 1/3 rpm record. I've got it and re-recorded it onto a cassette tape to play as I drove the old grades of the West Side and the Pickering in a 4x4. My latest 4x4 (a Toyota FJ Cruiser) does not have a cassette tape function.

Back in May 1959,I watched Shorty remove that whistle from West Side 10, using rags or waste (it was still hot) at the end of a run in Tuolumne. He then put it on the cab deck which would absorb some of the heat, then pick it up when he was done with everything else (it was cool enough to handle with a rag or two) and take it home.

The whistle ended up in the Tuolumne City Memorial Museum, in Tuolumne, where it resides today. Having heard my "moose" description of its sound, some Museum people several years ago took it over to the Roaring Camp tourist railroad at Felton where former West Side Shay #7 operates. They put it on the Shay (I don't know for how long) and blew it. At the end of the day, they and the whistle headed back to Tuolumne, where it went back into its Museum display case. One of them later reported to me that my description was pretty accurate. They had earlier tried it on compressed air in Tuolumne but apparently it did not sound the same.

(I'd post a couple of photos but I don't know how to do it on this forum).

With best regards, Hart Corbett