Introduction

In the opening months of 2006 I built a 3-truck Model Die Casting RoundhouseShay. On these pages you will find information and photos of that process. If you ever consider building the MDC Shay: brace your self. It's a beast to build, but you'll learn a lot.

It's a struggle. I used Jeff Johnstons book "The MDC Shay Handbook" as a guide to help me through the process. My advise: don't consider building the MDC Shay without the book. These pages are not a complete rewrite of Johnstons book but merely an addition to it. It wil show you the difficulties I have encountered and the fun I had. It will also give you some insights in my views and solutions and the (simple) tools I used.

Model railroading is fun and thankfully there are many builders everywhere. I've learned much of the skills I apply to this model by reading books and on the internet. One site has been particularly interesting and the owner of it very supportive, http://home.hetnet.nl/~f2hhanshobbyhoek/. But unfortunately this site has since disappeared.

For those who cannot wait to read the whole story, here is a quick preview of my Shay

This site will not contain prototype information. There is enough of it in all sorts of books and on the internet. So please take a look at

http://www.shaylocomotives.com/
http://www.gearedsteam.com/
http://www.steaminthewoods.com/

For the tooling I used to build the MDC Roundhouse Shay I refer to my tools section

regards, Garrattfan