Building the Kit
The resin kits, manufactured by Alpine Railway Shops of Kettleby, Ontario, were marketed as being representative of rolling stock used by CN and BCR for saw mills and paper mills. The gons were to become lettered for the KLR and be used in shuttle service between the Muskoka Timber mill and the Spruce Falls Pulp & Paper mill complex.
I have to make the following disclaimer first off that I'm not a huge fan of resin kits, especially older kits. They seem to lack the lateral stability of their plastic sister kits, and usually seem to have their fair share of air bubbles at the surface as well as excessive flash along the sides. The other problem that I find troublesome is most long surfaces have a serious warp to them. So with that said, I began the build of the three gondolas I had bought years ago. My first observation was that these looked to be an older resin kit based on the typed xeroxed instructions, and while you could say that there are directions, they are lacking in detail. A Google search of the company name yielded no results, except for a single eBay transaction for a car months ago, so no help there.
So off to step number 1, which gave me my first puzzle. The instructions were to use the polystyrene supplied, cut to the same dimensions as the under frame and set them aside. Which dimension...car length or width? No picture either. OK, this is going to be a challenge. I had to read ahead to instruction 29, which gave me the clue that this was to become a false floor covering the weight (not supplied). Come now, did I really need to read the directions?
This lead me to my second discovery, which was not only was the kit missing any sort of weighting material, there actually were no details as to what pieces part were to be supplied. So after opening each of the kits and finding a lack of consistency between all of the supplied materials, I was off to a good start building without all the parts and clear directions. This was definitely going to require some extra hardware from the excess parts and accumulation box.
I have to make the following disclaimer first off that I'm not a huge fan of resin kits, especially older kits. They seem to lack the lateral stability of their plastic sister kits, and usually seem to have their fair share of air bubbles at the surface as well as excessive flash along the sides. The other problem that I find troublesome is most long surfaces have a serious warp to them. So with that said, I began the build of the three gondolas I had bought years ago. My first observation was that these looked to be an older resin kit based on the typed xeroxed instructions, and while you could say that there are directions, they are lacking in detail. A Google search of the company name yielded no results, except for a single eBay transaction for a car months ago, so no help there.
So off to step number 1, which gave me my first puzzle. The instructions were to use the polystyrene supplied, cut to the same dimensions as the under frame and set them aside. Which dimension...car length or width? No picture either. OK, this is going to be a challenge. I had to read ahead to instruction 29, which gave me the clue that this was to become a false floor covering the weight (not supplied). Come now, did I really need to read the directions?
This lead me to my second discovery, which was not only was the kit missing any sort of weighting material, there actually were no details as to what pieces part were to be supplied. So after opening each of the kits and finding a lack of consistency between all of the supplied materials, I was off to a good start building without all the parts and clear directions. This was definitely going to require some extra hardware from the excess parts and accumulation box.
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| Multiple clamps and a spacer needed to keep the sides from warping and wandering as the CA dries |
The sides went together relatively easily, although I found that a full length spacer was needed as the model dried to keep the sides in alignment. Some scrap cardboard cut to size did the trick.
After tackling the sides, it was time to turn my attention to the underside. Relatively no problems there except for some missing parts. Good thing I always keep extra parts from other kits.
OK car walls on, underside completed, now it was time to address the weight of the cars. Spreading some glue on the interior floor, I used some buckshot as my weighting material. A quick check on my scale and it looks like the weighting along the length of the floor will be more than enough to have a compliant car.
Wheels and trucks are on next and the units are almost ready to go to the paint shop. However, when I got to the point of where the ladders need to be added, I had to stop as I didn't like the ladders which were provided and need to do some catalog shopping to see if I can come up with a suitable substitution. So they are now on my projects track and will be one of the first items to be addressed when building resumes in the fall.
After tackling the sides, it was time to turn my attention to the underside. Relatively no problems there except for some missing parts. Good thing I always keep extra parts from other kits.
OK car walls on, underside completed, now it was time to address the weight of the cars. Spreading some glue on the interior floor, I used some buckshot as my weighting material. A quick check on my scale and it looks like the weighting along the length of the floor will be more than enough to have a compliant car.
Wheels and trucks are on next and the units are almost ready to go to the paint shop. However, when I got to the point of where the ladders need to be added, I had to stop as I didn't like the ladders which were provided and need to do some catalog shopping to see if I can come up with a suitable substitution. So they are now on my projects track and will be one of the first items to be addressed when building resumes in the fall.
