There is little more to say than that. Ah, well, it had to happen sooner or later, I guess, as it has happened to innumerable large-scale train folks before me. I have often condoled with fellow garden railwayists over the years of the death of their Bachmann two-truck Shay, whose early days of production coincided unhappily with rapidly-disintegrating power truck frames or suddenly toothless gears. I was never smug about the fact that so far, I had escaped either of these fatal blows to what was surely THE definitive model of the late 90’s and early noughties - a frighteningly complex yet mass-produced scale model of an iconic prototype.
A few years back, I even bought a couple of the larger, three-truck variants, by then fitted with the much improved all-metal truck and housing more substantial and far less ephemeral gears.
Alas, today I met my hubris head-on, so to speak, as my Shay, bought in San Diego in 1999 and a faithful performer, gave a couple of desultory clicks, and came to a sudden and final stop.
I won’t say that I was heartbroken - after all, I’d had nineteen years more use and pleasure than some folks had. A far greater blow was the recollection that I had given my set of replacement trucks to a fellow G-Scale Madder so long ago that his name has escaped my fading memory - his need at the time being greater than mine, it seemed.
So now, the search begins for a pair of trucks - and your advice as to where this might be best achieved would be much appreciated. This side of the great Water or the other matters not a jot to me, there is still, after all, a perfectly adequate mail service.
Thanks for reading, and if you can help out, well, thanks for that, too.
