Railbus

The success or otherwise of this kit depends on the care and diligence brought to bear when preparing the castings. Because of the shape and complexity of the component pieces the castings do demand more work, both trimming flash and filling, than my other kits, there's no point pretending otherwise, but providing there's a careful and unhurried approach taken a good result can be achieved by those with average skills and experience.

Because the raw resin is difficult to photograph, I've sprayed a thin coat of grey primer over all the pieces. Having completed test builds in both primer and unpainted resin I'd recommend lightly spraying all the bits before starting. It's much easier to see what's going on.

I usually recommend  superglue for assembly and superglue mixed with talcum powder as a filler where necessary, however because of the small surface contact area and vulnerability of the bonnet to body join I would advise that expoy resin adhesive be used for this joint.

Here are the bits for the railcar itself,

and here's the luggage.

Start by taking the mudguard/running board/frame assembly. The cross hatched areas are to be removed.

The waste areas are thin and easily cut through. I recommend scribing round the outline of the wanted parts with a needle in a pin vice. I always start with the most fragile section round the exposed front mudguards. Rough edges I clean up with a sharp blade in a craft knife and sanding sticks.

The Kato chassis has to be cut down to fit. I remove couplings by levering away their mounting plate, then pull out the buffers. The photo shows how much must be cut away at each end, also that the mounting clips at one end  (the right hand end) must be sliced of and the capacitor (the green blobby thing) slid out from under the white clip and removed.Clearance for the chassis lengthwise is critical and as the build progresses to attaching the bonnet it may become necessary to file a small amount from each end to enable it to fit.

Next to prepare is the body moulding. I open out the windows first, again using the needle in the pin vice, before removing waste at the top and bottom of the body. Craft knife and sanding sticks take care of the final finishing.

In all probability there will be some small bobbles of resin present around the window frames, these ping off nicely when a small screwdriver is run round the edge of the frames. You might find this easier to do before opening out the windows.

Note: production kits will have a section of plastic strip on the left had edge of the bonnet cut out (looking from the front) this is to remedy a mould problem and give sufficient material to glue the bonnet to at this side. The plastic strip must remain in place.

The roof will have some flash on the underside to trim back as well as three triangular sections along eage side to cut away with a sharp craft knife. Here one side has been cleaned up while that nearest the camera illustrates the work to be done.

The bonnet is cleaned up in a similar way to the body, the waste at the bottom being cut away and discarded. The rear of the bonnet requires piercing through to accommodate the Kato chassis.

The headlight mouldings when trimmed of  flash require fixing to the bonnet/radiator section. I use 0.5mm nickel silver wire (not included) and drill appropriate sized holes in the rear (smaller diameter) section of the lamp body. Both lamps are fixed to a short section of wire.

Once set the wire is cut to separate the lamps and the wire trimmed back to leave a few mm protruding from the lamp body. Holes are drilled either side on the bonnet radiator join and the laps fixed in place by their wire tails.

All the sub assemblies can now be fixed together apart from the roof which should be left until painting and glazing has taken place. The Kato chassis is a snug push fit in the body. If it's desired to have mudguards and running boards in a contrasting colour to the body it may be wise to paint these sections separately before glueing together.