It loos so different but is captivating at the same time!

As I get drawn down this rabbit hole of 7mm narrow gauge or On30 as it is USA based, I am slowly digging out my collection of rolling stock. Todays find is the T Boiler 2 Truck Shay made by Bachmann.

A rather strange looking loco and with its T shaped boiler and rod and driveshaft propulsion to what look like bogies that should be under a diesel loco!

And that is its charm! It loos so different but is captivating at the same time as we look at something we are not used to but are drawn in by the vision of something that in our minds probably should only exist as a cartoon.

I actually purchased this second hand over 20 years ago from the model shop that was opposite Pickering railway station in Yorkshire. Given that the loco is probably from the first batch that Bachmann made in 2002 and that the box made no reference to DCC, and the instructions did not either  I was presuming that it would be necessary to hard wire a DCC chip in and that is if I could even find the wires for the pickups and motor! However, curiosity got the better of me and I took the coal load out of its bunker and to my amazement there was a circuit board with an 8 pin decoder socket!

A suitable decoder was booked out of the WMD Stores and fitted.

Refitting the coal load the Shay ran superbly on part of My Last Great Project Layout. It just needs aa layout of its own and IU am now a month and a half into the promise of building said layout by the end of 2026!