I obtained this Class 121 (OK it was a present) just after the Mk 1 Rhiw had met its maker and it's been in the cupboard ever since. Partly because I knew that it needed some work doing to it and because, as explained above, bits had already fallen off of it despite only having been test run. Both battery boxes had failed and were stored with it in the box. This is/was an easy fix - a quick run over with a small file to remove the ineffective glue residue and a refit with a drop of UHU. The point is this shouldn't happen and a big block of plastic like this is hardly fragile. No matter.
I still have to fit the bag of bits to the bufferbeams and compared to my homegrown method of some commercial screw links and bits of guitar string it will be a fiddle. All this is doing is pushing me back toward a larger scale and away from RTR. Probably not the intention of the maker.
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I've bought quite of newer N gauge RTR and a lot of it has odd bits that have fallen off, which is OK provided you can find them!
ReplyDeleteDo we need all the bits? Really? You are viewing a model from three to five feet away. A moving model, probably from the top of an adjacent tree or borrowed helicopter. All that full brake rigging is invisible. The fact that the guards van has full interior planking and his sandwiches open on the table is invisible, especially with a glued on roof. Irrelevant and additional expense. In the "good old days", I speak here particularly with my US HO hat firmly down around my ears. A US manufacturers models were basically good, but lacked finesse in details and livery. The mechanisms were far better than anything available to the British modeller at the time, but liveries and loco specific detail? There was a whole hobby of after sales parts and a hobby in its own right of superdetailing, repainting, and weathering. My point is, so much of what "the modeller demands" is not really general to the majority? A model that runs well ( forgotten by some manufacturers today ) looks like the general class, but lacks the extra pipes and boxes that 47-xxx had between 1998-2005 is acceptable. Those that want such can add the details themselves and good on them. That is their hobby. What we are having thrust on us is the colleectors wish for models that used to sit at the sides of shows such as Central Hall in glass cases to be admired for the workmanship/craftmanship. Yes this level of detail is available at what is still less than the price of a professional paint job, then or now. But those models were never meant to be operated (played with?). They were to be handled with white cotton gloves and coddled.
ReplyDeleteI have several Bachmann 2-EPB units, after most shows some box or little fittment falls of and unless obvious, I admit to discarding them. No one has yet pointed out that one unit seems to be devoid of some valve or other. With no instructions on what and where, I cannot say I am concerned too much. I am concerned when after a short period there is no obvious means of servicing the units, the couplers fail, or never worked correctly in the first place, or the motor drive chain just plain disintegrates.
This has happened to me in O scale too, a recent Australian loco was a complete engineering botch from these aspects, so far I have had one "pup" from a Sino/Welsh manufacturer with an odd lapse of design (a guards van).
Value for money this company seems to have the current edge on true value for money, detail and running/operability.
Rant over and awaiting incomming fire?
3' under normal use yes, but not when CT is just about to stuff his Canon right up it's nose.
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