Manufacturer: Railway Design Associates, 241 Silver Street, Monson, MA 01057. Price: 1013G "Tank at Beanblossom Creek" $129.95 suggested list.

Allow me to preface the review: My sample is RDA's pilot production model and my responsibility, aside from the review, was to help redesign elements in the kit's appearance and construction. Its heritage is an HO scale design by Jim Findley and John Allen. It now more closely reflects that. So the model in our photo is a little different from the one in RDA's advertisements. Later, I will point out the additional changes I made to my own model.

One other comment: The relatively thin pieces of wood and the fragility of the detail on the model make it unsuitable to leave outside. It is an indoor model you may take outdoors when you operate trains.

Even though the nominal scale of the tank is 1:24, it would be suitable for narrow gauge modelers working in scales up to 1:20.3 and standard gauge modelers in scales down to 1:29. That is because water tanks varied considerably in size and proportion. The POLA tank, for example, works as well for 1:32 standard gauge as for 1:22.5 narrow gauge. The limiting factors in the RDA tank are the size of the access door in the base and the height of the window. In 1:32 scale, the door would measure 8 feet high by 4 feet wide and the window would be 6 1/2 feet off the ground. That stretches credibility a little. In 1:29, though, the door scales a more manageable 7 feet 3 inches high by 3 feet 8 inches wide and the window drops down to six feet.

In the larger scales the door and window dimensions and positions become less critical because frostbox access doors were usually smaller than structure entry doors and windows occur in almost any size. For the record, in 1:24, the door is 6 by 3 feet and the window sits 5 feet off the ground. In 1:22.5 the door dimensions become 5 1/2 feet by 2 feet 9 inches and the window height 4 feet 8 inches. In 1:20.3, the door is 5 by 2 1/2 feet and the window height 4 feet 3 inches. Enough on doors and windows, all right?

The other critical dimension is the height of the spout. In sequence, moving from 1:29 to 1:20.3, that distance is 12 feet, 10 feet, 9 feet, and 8 feet 5 inches. Each falls within the limits of clearances on real tanks. Do keep in mind, the 1:20.3 scale dimension would be more suitable to smaller narrow gauge locomotives. The spout height matches the water hatch on LGB Moguls and switchers (including the Porter) with the locomotive resting on LGB track. If, for some reason, the clearance were to seem tight, put the tank on a little hill. Real railroads sometimes did.

In 1:1 scale, the tank takes up a space 6 inches wide by 5 inches deep by 18 inches high.

Even though the tank has a lot of detail, it is fairly easy to build. A beginner with confidence could do a good job. A modeler with average experience has the potential to create a masterpiece. The most critical part is painting, staining, and finishing the urethane pieces. The most difficult part of construction is gluing on the tank bands. Neither requires a surgeon's skill. I spent about fifteen hours on my tank. An hour of that involved cutting the wood to length, a thrill you'll be able to forego. RDA's production kits will have pre-cut wood. I probably spent eight hours developing a method for coloring the parts. If you read next month's OR, you'll save half that time by taking my advice. The rest was simply redesigning, filing, sanding, fitting, and gluing and, since I work deliberately, some of you will trim another hour or two from my time.

The parts go together with very little effort. I used CA (superglue) on the urethane to urethane, metal to urethane, and metal to wood joints. I used Walthers' Goo for the wood to urethane and wood to wood joints.

The roof of the "stone" base is a rectangle of .060 styrene with a piece of 220 grit sandpaper on top. Scraps of wood or styrene inside the base position it. Stripwood also forms the "cap" of the base and the tank support timbers. The tank itself is an acrylic tube. You glue the wood staves around it. If you first align the staves side by side over strips of masking tape, then draw lines across them to position the tank bands, you'll be able to glue them on neatly. Once you glue the staves to the tube, the lines will show where to fasten the bands.

RDA includes castings to represent hoop fasteners. They are too large and lack enough detail to appear real so I left them off my model. Instead I overlapped the ends of the tank bands to approximate closer-to-scale fasteners.

I also used "weedeater" .030 nylon monofilament from the garden section of my hardware store instead of the stranded copper wire RDA supplies for tank bands. The wire looks like cable. Tank hoops were truss rods, very similar to the ones under wooden railroad cars, and they are solid. I cut ten bands to length and glued them in place with CA.

The roof is a good looking, one piece urethane casting. The kit comes with slightly more material than you will need, including some styrene strip. I used it to add extra detail around the roof hatch. Incidentally, the roof only touched the tank at two points. Use strong glue. I used both Goo and CA.

For some reason the kit furnishes styrene instead of wood for building up the ladders. To make the plastic look like wood, drag a fine tooth razor saw along the length of the styrene strips a few times. The scratches will resemble wood grain. Then, attach the ladder rungs with a liquid styrene cement such as Testor's. It welds the parts together quickly. If you paint the styrene with primer and then stain it, the ladders will look so much like wood you'll have to look twice.

The spout and pulley castings look very good when you color them. I sprayed the spout and counterweights with Krylon Semi-Flat Black and colored the metal pulley parts and copper chain with Hobby Black. Slip the chain into the tiny eye-bolts RDA provides, drill holes in the spout and spout hanger framework to accept the eye-bolts, and glue them in place with CA.

Cement the finial to the peak of the roof and you're done.

You may be wondering why my model is missing some details you may have noticed in the ad. I deliberately left them off, but I photographed them so you could see what they are. The intricate wooden lattice has disappeared from the top of the stone base because it was unnecessarily complicated, time consuming, difficult, and unusual. Even though RDA includes enough styrene to build railings there, I find them atypical; they are missing from my tank. The corrugated iron overhang may add character, but I decided to save it for another project. The tools add clutter, but they seemed more at home near a work shed. And I had no time to paint Sonny the Workman.

The Beanblossom tank's castings are very good. The wood is also of high quality. The contrast between them brings the kit to life. The tank has a lot of character, detail, and, something many products lack, charisma. Its construction is very straightforward and actually enjoyable; I felt no frustration. If you are willing to spend a few hours on a model worth the time, consider Railway Design Associates' flagship kit. It is an excellent product. When you finish, it will merit a place of honor on your layout.--RR