jeffrey-wimberly wrote:Yes! I got so frustrated with a Proto 2000 covered hopper kit that I threw it out in the trash.
If you think P2K kits are hard, try building a Westerfield kit sometime! The urethane parts are so frigile that they break by the slightest touch. On top of that, the only glue that will hold these kits together are the CA (crazy glue) type. Give me a P2K kit anytime!!!
Have Fun.... Bob.
I too like claycts gave up on Heljan TT with Walther motor drive... just plain junk. Trust me, not worth it.
Also, tried a CVT curvable turn-out kit and gave up (actually built it but found it worked poorly, even after repeated attempts to improve it). I love other CVT products, but not these kits.
I have struggled through many tough kits and ended up with nice results, including Tichy Crane (which I found not too bad to assemble) and P2K tank cars and consider myself an anvanced kit builder, but sometimes you just need to quit if it ain't fun and send it to the scrap box. BTW, if you think the Tichy Crane is tough, don' go near the Tichy coaling tower! But in the end, that tower is a fantastic model and one of the most impressive on my pike.
Well I saved my log car from the trash. I think my initial frustration made things worse as I assembled the rest of it. (Leading to more snapped metal pieces)
Any way, my hats off to Kadee to their top line support staff. If it wasn't for them I wouldn't have finished this kit. They have earned me as a loyal customer and I'm going back to buy 3 more.
(And now for the final product...minus stakes and chains) I assembled this during my lunch hour over the week. Now that I have successfully put together one, I think I could do it again in 2-3 solid hours.
The wood is railroad tie brown. (I figured this would make sense for a log car) and the ends were tarnished black. The bolts, seen on the side of the main center beam, were painted in Aluminum. (Hence the lack of contrast in colors.) It's subtle, but just enough in my book.
Don - Specializing in layout DC->DCC conversions
Modeling C&O transition era and steel industries There's Nothing Like Big Steam!
jecorbett wrote: More times than I care to remember although like some of the other posters, I usually don't throw it all away. I save the useful parts to make something else. An exception was a metal coal mining kit that had to be soldered together. It was my first and last attempt at assembling a metal structure. It required a skills I didn't have and I all but ruined the piece trying to develop those skills. I didn't see anything there worth saving so it went to trash can. This is my first post since being away from the hobby all summer. Golf takes up most of the free time then. Every year I tell myself I'm going to spend a little time in the train room during the summer months but it never happens. The golf game was really bad this year and I've threatened to give it up and devote more time to the trains. That's another vow that I seem to make every year. Of course, model railroading presents its own form of frustrations as this thread shows. Apparently, I am a glutton for punishment.
More times than I care to remember although like some of the other posters, I usually don't throw it all away. I save the useful parts to make something else. An exception was a metal coal mining kit that had to be soldered together. It was my first and last attempt at assembling a metal structure. It required a skills I didn't have and I all but ruined the piece trying to develop those skills. I didn't see anything there worth saving so it went to trash can.
This is my first post since being away from the hobby all summer. Golf takes up most of the free time then. Every year I tell myself I'm going to spend a little time in the train room during the summer months but it never happens. The golf game was really bad this year and I've threatened to give it up and devote more time to the trains. That's another vow that I seem to make every year. Of course, model railroading presents its own form of frustrations as this thread shows. Apparently, I am a glutton for punishment.
Just remember..."Golf" backwards is "flog".
Dave
Just be glad you don't have to press "2" for English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_ALEdDUB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hqFS1GZL4s
http://s73.photobucket.com/user/steemtrayn/media/MovingcoalontheDCM.mp4.html?sort=3&o=27
I have ready for my type of TRASH CAN:
Walthers 90 ft TT Kit with Motor
Heljan 98ft TT
Suydam Hopper Car
Silver Streak MOW Car
Tichy Trains 25 ton crane with Boom Car
And about half dozen unbuilt, unlettered Atherns Blue Box Kits.
My trash can is called EBAY!!
Some people will buy what you give up on, TRUST ME. I had a Roundhouse SHay kit Half Finished and sold it for $45.00. All the parts where there along with the "SUPER DETAIL KIT they sold way back when.
I'm working on a P2K boxcar now and it definitely won't be going down the pike with all it's grab irons. There's this one grab iron on the sprue and that part is so tiny and so flimsy that out of 6 only 2 made it off the sprue intact. If you look at it straight for over 5 seconds they automatically break.
Jarrell
I always think I am a patient person but when I try and fix or build things that just dont fit or want to work I resort to the old saying, "If its out of sight its out of mind", I usualy make sure I dont get tempted to try again so a good whack with a hammer usualy solves the problem.
I also think some plastic kits are made over complicated just for the sake of making it complicated, one kit had so many fiddly parts that I got around to building it 15 months after I purchased it.
Not a $30.00 kit but a few iteams have went Air Born. But I am Much Better Now, that is what the Doctor keeps telling me!
Sometimes venting with something fly across the room helps. Few things that I have launched are all rolling again.
In my Car days I cut off a cheap set of P-S headers with a hot wrench. Took a 2 pound hammer to them then backed over them with the Road Runner a few time and then turned them to slag with the tourch!
Cuda Ken Much Better Again
I hate Rust
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
Yup. Any P2K freight car kit, even what they call 'timesavers'. I've built Intermountain, Red Caboose, Branchline Blueprint and had no problem with them, I can't get one of those P2K's to go together to save my life. Saved the trucks, though. Think I'd learn. Went to my LHS the other day, picked up a ready-made P2K Mather boxcar, guy asked me what I was doing spending all that money on a ready-run, told him it was cheaper in the long run from spending all that money on a kit that wouldn't end up going together right, anyway.
Have to admit that I'm not a big P2K fan anyway, but those kits make me yell at my students.
Not a good sign.
Tom
Tom View my layout photos! http://s299.photobucket.com/albums/mm310/TWhite-014/Rio%20Grande%20Yuba%20River%20Sub One can NEVER have too many Articulateds!
YES I HAVE!! I've tried several craftsman kits in both HO and O scales and ended up smashing them with my fist when it came to putting on all the microscopic, extremely fussy details. Unfortunately, I have zero patience with craftsman kits with zillions of parts, however, I find scratchbuilding much more relaxing because I can assemble and build it MY way. Although I still like On30, I've recently become frustrated with all the miniscule details that instantly destruct or are extremely frustrating to put on properly - and details look absolutely terrible if installed wrong. I've wrecked and disposed of many projects - both kits and scratchbuilt - while trying to accomplish this chore. Since my hobby was being filled with frustration - working or even the anticipation of working on a project was worse than having to do the laundry - I've switched to indoor Large Scale narrow gauge. Although it really takes up A LOT of space and I could have a lot less, I find LS very enjoyable to work with and scratchbuilding and detailing are very relaxing - which is what hobbies are all about.
If I should decide to try On30 or even HO again, I would probably go the RTR route - especially where rolling stock and complicated structures are concerned - and focus my love of scratchbuilding and superdetailing on Large Scale. I love building trestles and wooden bridges from scratch in any scale. As far as locos are concerned, RTR rules - even in Large Scale.
Well the support cables that run under the beams didn't go on as easy as I hoped. But I drilled new holes for them and all is well.
And fast setting ACC is remarkable at repairing things.
I ummm...
well...
I kinda...
sorta retrieved my log car from the trash. I went to the hobby store today and picked up some ACC and new brass wire.
I haven't thrown it away but I have a NWSL regearing kit for an Athearn switcher that is still in the "to do" pile. It's been about 4 years now. The directions weren't very clear and I think I lost one of the parts. Maybe some day...
Life is simple - eat, drink, play with trains!
Go Big Red!
PA&ERR "If you think you are doing something stupid, you're probably right!"
Tom Curtin wrote:You have to be "of a certain age" to know what I'm talking about here. Who remembers those craftsman passenger car kits Walthers produced decades ago? Tinplate sides, zamac ends, and everything else wood. They were the kits from hell. I had half a dozen of 'em and trashed 'em all! One of the kindest things Walthers ever did for the sanity of modelers was to discontinue them!!
riogrande5761 wrote: jeffrey-wimberly wrote:Yes! I got so frustrated with a Proto 2000 covered hopper kit that I threw it out in the trash.I actually built one of those kits and it's lovely,
After two or three cars I discovered one trick is to not glue those trianglar lateral center hopper supports. They fit so tight that glue is irrelevant.
Gandy Dancer wrote: Medina1128 wrote:I had a friend whose dad worked in the engine shop on the flight line, and he gave us each some old sealed ball beaings. Result: I had the best rolling ugly block of wood Pinewood Derby car that year. Moral of the story:I thought the moral was that Boy Scouts are bound by honor not to cheat. Ball Bearings are forbidden, in fact any bearings and washers are forbidden.
Medina1128 wrote:I had a friend whose dad worked in the engine shop on the flight line, and he gave us each some old sealed ball beaings. Result: I had the best rolling ugly block of wood Pinewood Derby car that year. Moral of the story:
Those? I had one on the shelf for about 30 years until it finally got thrown away, that one made it down the ramp about 6 feet and hung stalled on the high center guide of the competition ramp. The rest of the cars raced the last few dozen feet or so to the end. It was a big old block with very little done to it to maintain mass and weight.
Tom Curtin wrote:You have to be "of a certain age" to know what I'm talking about here. Who remembers those craftsman passenger car kits Walthers produced decades ago?
Oh my gosh I forgot about those. My dad had a few and he said they were the most impossible things to build. They sure look nice in the finished photos, and they had full interiors. But oh what a nightmare they must have been.
Matt from Anaheim, CA and Bayfield, COClick Here for my model train photo website
I tossed one or perhaps two... well... three... no no no. let's see now.. *Counts fingers...
Anyhow.. I sell them off on Ebay if I find them too much trouble and use the money to get a RTR version. =) sometimes there is a small profit.
I came the closest with this:
It's a Suydam kit, and when finished turned out great. But getting to the end was never easy. The walls were a piece of cake but then came the trim and those stairs
The instructions were terrible. I must have read over the part on the stairs 30 times. The main problem was the instructions did not match the included pieces. I ended up building the stairs without instructions. Sort of scratch built in a way.
I've built other Suydam kits (Ed's Market, Sunkist Citrus, Brown Bungalow, etc...) but their instructions were much better.
As frustrating as it was, I'm pleased with the results. Only thing left to do is add a name board, but I'm still debating on what name to use.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Man is this a timely topic! First time in 30 years I've had to admit defeat was last night with a severely warped P2K stock car kit. Though it hasn't become trashcan fodder yet, it's very close.
As far as maddeningly fragile grabs are concerned, brass wire has become my new best friend.
Now, back to the battle; only 11 more P2K tank cars and 4 more stock car kits to go!
I started slow and easy. I've still got a "craftsman kit" that I'm hesitant to tackle, but I think I'm probably up to it now. Nothing has ever gone in the trash. (Yeah, another Scotsman. When I say "nothing," I mean nothing. I've got sprue from 2 years back. No parts on it, just sprue.)
I've noticed that the back wall of a lot of DPM kits is too long. I have to cut one wall-thickness off the end of it to make the rest of the walls square. My early kits have non-square footprints, because I glued things together before I realized that what didn't look right to my eye really wasn't right.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
uh oh. And I just bought two of the P2K tanker kits and a P2K boxcar kit tonight. Normally I tend to stay away from kits, but for 5 bucks apiece I went for it. Oh well, maybe if I take my time and don't get too frustrated I'll eventually get them together.
JaRRell
selector wrote: Sort of. I tackled, as green and unknowing as I was, a P2K tanker kit that gave me fits. I finally packaged up what few intact bars and grabs I had not destroyed and gave it to a fellow fine modeler who knew how to put it all right. In fact, he placed brass wire grabs and bars on it for me where they were destroyed. Looks good now, better than I could have done.RTR is my friend. I have low standards, compared to some I suppose, but I must account only to myself since I pay my bills.
Sort of. I tackled, as green and unknowing as I was, a P2K tanker kit that gave me fits. I finally packaged up what few intact bars and grabs I had not destroyed and gave it to a fellow fine modeler who knew how to put it all right. In fact, he placed brass wire grabs and bars on it for me where they were destroyed. Looks good now, better than I could have done.
RTR is my friend. I have low standards, compared to some I suppose, but I must account only to myself since I pay my bills.