Sunday 21 July 2013

Big box of A-Line goodies


I picked up this job lot of A-Line kits on ebay on the spur of the moment.  The description made it sound like there were fewer kits than there turned out to be so it was a bit of a bonus when the box turned up in the post crammed with packets.  These kits are all long out of production and are the same models that were later released by Athearn under the RTR brand.


These kits are a mixture of intermodal equipment, and they are all labelled for 'Victors' the old model shop in Pentonville Road - a long lost store that was a treasure trove of US outline models in London.

The kits include:

 A trio of 48' Gunderson Well cars, complete with trucks and wheels.   

A pair of Gunderson 56' Well cars with USPS containers (no trucks included)



An 89' flat car with trucks.

A 53' semi truck reefer trailer.

Four 40' USPS parcel trailers.

I will most likely put some of these kits back onto ebay as I already have two five car sets of A-Line well cars on the workbench and I can't really justify adding five more!

The 89' flat car will make a good project and the 40' parcel trailers were the main reason I bought the lot as they will be useful for my spine car set.  So they will probably stay in the 'to do' pile :)


Tuesday 9 July 2013

The modules go back together at last.



This week the club space was a hive of activity as the modules were re-configured and tested ahead of our next running session.  I had attached the new feet to my module just in time for it to be added to the loop.


I also spent some time drilling holes and 'planting' the latest batch of trees from ebay.  I'm using the medium green Chinese trees that are sold by everestmodel direct from asia.  They are pretty good as filler trees and work out less than 50p each which makes them ideal for filling out scenes.





The new boards are coming along nicely, with the paper mill and grain industry spurs laid and partly ballasted.  The roads are marked and a couple of model trucks show where they will be.



There are still nine weeks until our show and the boards will continue to be worked on until then.  We should have space to fit as many boards as are ready by then.

Saturday 6 July 2013

Four foot freemo

After the Crawley exhibition the club standard for module feet has been changed from inset bolts to an offset screw foot.  I bought four and spent a few minutes attaching them last night.  The modules were due to be reconfigured so we can have running nights again which meant I needed to fix the new feet beforehand.



The old feet were bolts attached into plates at the base of each leg, and these were difficult to adjust and also had a habit of jumping on their threads while being adjusted.


The new feet are much easier to adjust and because they have built-in foot-pads they should give a much more stable support which is less likely to damage the flooring at exhibition venues.