KATIE FROM SCRATCH

PART 2

Corrections to Part 1

1.                  I’ve had to content myself with Doncaster green – Darlington green in gloss no longer being available (chiz). 

2.                  I’ve spent another £50 on materials and tools – solder, Baker’s No 3 Fluid (flux), 2 modeller’s G-gramps, a set of needle files, 2 small paint brushes, heatproof paint (black, for boiler and smokebox), wet and dry emery paper and a butane/propane blowtorch.  I am minded to get a Dremel drill and a drill stand.  In financial terms, therefore, you save very little in buying a kit if you have to add to your tool collection for the one job, but you do get to understand live steam!

The Kits

The kits arrived on Tuesday 14 March.  It seemed that there were only 3, but they’d tucked the Radio Control kits into one of the other boxes.  I’ve got insulated wheels for £10 extra – it will do no harm and will allow me to use the track to distribute lighting/power to coaches, points and signals.

Everything except the major body and boiler parts arrives in compartmented strips of polythene, so you won’t lose any bits if you just open up what you need as you go along.

These pictures show just what you get and how it comes.

The Manuals

As at 21 March, I am still waiting for the consignment of primers and paints to turn up.  So what to do?  Answer: RTFM – read the 4 manuals – one for each kit!

When I ordered the kits, the nice lady said to me “Phone us up if you get into difficulty – preferably before!  We are very good at solving kit-builders’ problems.”  I believe them.

Having read the manuals I realised that each is tailored to completing the kit with which it comes, and doesn’t assume you are necessarily going to build a set.  This affects how parts have been distributed between the kits, and it becomes obvious that there is a degree of interlocking necessary if everything is to fit together smoothly.  

So I’ve put together a spreadsheet that shows the order in which I think parts should be assembled.  It is not a substitute for the instructions, but if you print out the pages and hold them at arms length you will quickly see that you have to start work on the boiler kit before you’ve finished the chassis – and so on.  For example, you need to put the saddle tank mount/boiler band on the boiler before the boiler is fitted to the chassis, whereas the instructions, if followed to the letter, make you put the boiler in place, then remove it again to fit the body.

It’s essential to read what is in the manuals, and not to do too much.  For example, when doing some metal-folding I folded the bottoms of the cab sides through 90 deg, then realised from checking a picture of a complete loco that I shouldn’t have done this.  Fortunately I was able to flatten them out again without difficulty.  I will come back to this in the next instalment.

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