Dry-fitting parts is always a good idea. Put things together without glue and you'll spot potential issues that won't be any easier to deal with when the adhesive is flowing and getting all over your hands.
As you can see, there is a part fit issue with the Cravens DMU floor. Basically, it's too long.
To be fair, this is mentioned in the instructions, but is a bit of a surprise when you see just how bad the situation is. The solution was to lop 2mm off each end of the floor and then thin the ends slightly s they fitted in the pockets in the whitemetal bits. 3mm would probably have been enough but I'm better at measuring whole mm, and the extra 1/2mm at each end wasn't going to be an issue. A bit of wiggle room is welcome.
First though, the interior. On a parcels unit, this isn't much, but I feel that something in the cab is a good idea and had picked up a couple of mouldings from Replica Railways. After a little trimming, they will fit in behind the cab fronts OK.
More importantly, they will fit through the holes in the floor the power bogie occupies. I'll need to fit them after the glazing goes in, and that has to be done after painting. There's a fair bit of thinking ahead required with this kit.
Ayway, floor trimmed and fitted with epoxy glue and I have a model that starts to look like a DMU.
This "parts trimming" routine seems to be a key aspect of kit building - especially with a lot of model railway kits.
ReplyDeletePlease note - I'm not complaining about this - far from it, in fact - and I'm certainly not slamming all these kits as a load of "Old El Crappo" (or whatever description Colin Massingham came out with for certain ones).
As I see it, the main issue here is that most of these kits probably don't sell in anything like the same numbers as (say) an Airfix 1:72 scale Spitfire - so the cost of the design and toolmaking work involved in creating kits has to be paid back over a small number of kits.
This is unlikely to be commercially viable for a "conventional" manufacturer - so we're likely to be looking at "cottage industry" to fill these gaps, quite possibly as a hobby, from a back bedroom.
Realistically, this might mean these kits being more like "scratch aids", using as many standard parts as possible, with a requirement for builders to do a bit of "cut and carve" work.