1:24 SCALE FLATCAR LOAD
Manufacturer: Railway Design Associates, 241 Silver Street, Monson, MA 01067. Price: 1007G flatcar load with vertically sitting gear $6.95 suggested list.
A MANAGEABLE PROJECT, such as building RDA's flatcar load, may be extremely satisfying. For one thing, it takes under two hours of spare time to complete. For another, it looks terrific. The result? Almost immediate gratification and an interesting little eye-catcher you'll feel proud of.
The kit represents a pair of large gears, one on each end of an axle, sitting on a shipping pallet. The gears are two clean polyurethane castings. You simply file away the small amount of flash and super glue the pieces together. The pallet consists mainly of pre-cut lumber you glue together. The quality of the wood parts is good, with minimal "fuzz". The only cutting involves the triangular, vertical side supports. After you assemble the wood parts, you add little brass escutcheon pins to represent nails or bolts. The instructions tend to be general, with clear, exploded line drawings showing how everything goes together. Anything more detailed could be almost insulting.
Even if you have never touched a piece of wood or a tube of glue, you'll have no trouble with this kit. I assembled mine while a telephone company repair representative kept me on hold, during two other telephone conversations, and while taking a thirty minute break from editing this magazine. The kit is a no-brainer.
First I pre-stained each piece of wood with my familiar dilute mixture of rubbing alcohol and India ink. Then I used the sketch on the instructions as a guide in building the pallet. I cut the two long pieces of wood into triangular braces similar to those in the sketch but decided to dig into my scrapbox for 1/8-inch square basswood side reinforcements to vary the size of the timbers. The instructions suggest using 5-minute epoxy to glue the parts, especially if you want to use the model outdoors. I consider it a little frail to leave outside; the wood may deteriorate too fast. And I used my old standby, Walther's Goo, to cement the pieces together because it is waterproof, resilient, and any excess is easy to remove.
I washed the gears with soap and water. An hour later I sprayed them with Krylon Ruddy Brown Primer, mainly because it was handy. While the paint was drying, I drilled a bunch of holes in the pallet with a number 76 bit and pushed in the escutcheon pins, a job taking all of fifteen minutes. Finally, I blackened the pin heads with Hobby Black Number One for a weathered, brown-black appearance, weathered the gears with the ink/alcohol solution, dusted on some pastel chalks, and glued the gear to the pallet. Nothing tricky, no problems to overcome, just wham, bam, boom.
So? Does the load have character, or what?
The pallet measures 3 1/2 inches long by 2 1/4 inches wide. The overall height, with the gear in place, is about 2 1/4 inches. It is suitable for 1:24, 1:22.5, and possibly 1:20.3 scales. I'm no expert on pallets, but I suspect the model would be slightly too big for 1:32 or 1:29.
Once again RDA goes to the head of the class. The kit is simple, but first rate. It gets an "A". And, for those of you preferring to ship your gears horizontally, kit number 1006G is identical except for the way you seat the load. Try a Railway Design Associates flatcar load. You'll like it.--RR
