Start up

I knew about the existence of the MDC Shays and that it had the name of being difficult to build. On the other hand, a price of around 60-70 dollars isn't a great deal of money and this price has to come from somewhere. Early 2005 I stumbled over a 2 truck Shay kit on an auction in Houten, Netherlands and bought it at a price of 60 euro. Since I was building another kit at that time I simply stored it and went searching for Jeff Johnston's "MDC Shay Handbook". I advertised on Marktplaats (an eBay look alike) and succeeded in finding a copy of the book in December 2005. There was one detail: it went together with a partially built 3-truck Shay. Once again I spent 60 euros on both the book and the Shay. I decided to build the 3-truck Shay first.

When I returned home after my purchase I carefully laid out all parts of the kit

The kit was nearly complete, only the diamond stacks failed. As to the state of building: work had only just begun. The gearbox was assembled, the three bogies had been worked on but not completed and some work had been done on the detailing of the body. The work wasn't done very neatly but nothing seemed beyond repair. A set of six new wipers also came with the kit so I didn't have to bother about finding and buying them myself.

All in all I wasn't unhappy with my purchase.