THE CliShay PROJECT
CHAPTER 5
Darrel Brehm purchased the CliShay and enjoyed it at his farm in Pratt, Kansas for several years. The nature of his enjoyment may never be known. We know he had a 7 ½” gauge track adjacent to his house and we saw a partially completed second CliShay in his shop. The firebox was very clean and the boiler was dry. While transporting the CliShay home, very little debris fell from the grates. More on that later.
Sadly, Darrel Brehm passed away in 2022. His two sons had the daunting task of what to do with the train collection. Pratt is a city of 6600 people. The Brehm’s collection was so large, they could give each person in Pratt 3 pieces of the collection!
Pratt is close to Iuka, Kansas and 80 miles from Wichita. In other words, it’s in the middle of nowhere. The B 29 museum is nearby and the adjacent airfield is where Pilots were trained to fly B 29’s during WWII. It was obvious the train collection was not going to sell locally. Darrel’s sons are an attorney and farmer. Liquidating a 20,000 piece collection would prove to be a big job for anyone.
The 2 sons were returning from an automobile trip and were listening to NPR. NPR would prove to be yet another coincidence that led to the return of the CliShay to it’s roots in Cincinnati.
Bill Fitt enjoyed the CliShay for several years. In fact, several copies of the locomotive were made by members of Cinder Sniffers and others world wide. Bob Maynard published a book about the construction of the CliShay. The second printing is still available on Amazon and many other sites. Maynard estimated 200 CliShays were built at the time of his passing in 2010. A quick internet search for CliShay shows examples in UK, New Zealand and Australia. We are constantly finding additional copies of the CliShay. There is at least one YouTube channel by a young man who is currently building a CliShay. It’s no wonder so many have been built. They are ideal for the novice builder and inexperienced operator.
Then one day in 1993, as the story goes, a member of Cinder Sniffers was reading the classified ads in a copy of MODELTEC. This was long before the days of the internet. Apparently Bill Fitt passed away and his wife and son posted an ad for the original CliShay. It was more than a coincidence that a member of Cinder Sniffers read the ad and arranged the purchase of the original CliShay within 30 minutes of reading the ad. The Original CliShay was returning home. It had traveled 700 miles of the 2400 mile total journey. The next trip will be much longer.
The CliShay was to be enjoyed by a member of Cinder Sniffers and his wife (who had her own CliShay) for several years.
A visitor to the Cinder Sniffers track introduced Darrel Brehm to the CliShay. Brehm was an avid train enthusiast from Kansas. He mentioned a desire to purchase a CliShay if one became available. Brehm had an extensive HO scale collection, a real caboose and a 7 ½” gauge track at his home in Pratt, KS.
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