Bit of a ramble, but hey ho.
Back to the daily commute this week (B17 and S15 bimbling along in the background) with a JLTRT fest of County, King and Star.
I've started with the County as it's been the longest jammed under the bench and like all other JLTRT kits I've done' a bit of a lottery as to what's in the box, this was no exception.
Now I'll freely admit these are often second hand and things get lost along the way but I'm not seeing these losses in other brands. Having said that, once you've built half a dozen you do end up with a big pile of left over castings and more often as not you'll find the bits you need from previous kits.
With that in mind that's why there are no brakes, I have some bits but not the important bits that hold it all together so I'm hoping the next two will have some if not all of the bits I need as spares.
I don't know if the kit was originally designed with a brass coal space but if it was it's been replaced with a resin core (not unreasonable and average fit) and the brass parts discarded, if that's the case then there are bits on that sheet you need to finish the tender, or more worryingly, those bits were never supplied.
There are only two pitfalls to be aware of, the first is the lockers at the front, they're white metal casings but only from the platform up, worse yet the platform has holes for them to fit into so there's nothing underneath to support or align them. My pack of levitating glue was missing from the kit.
Further more the locker metal work below the footplate is also where the hand rail affixes, the top end secured with a strap (missing from the etches). I'm going to guess that at some point the lockers were full height etches that folded up and dropped in the hole, since replaced by a half height white metal casting to aid building....it doesn't.
The other pitfall is the rear deck, there's an inner core with sides, rear end and deck, the sides and end fold down which is not untoward, however the bend lines are what I call dotted line bends, half etch, full etch, half etch, full etch, etc etc, this means that when folded you're left with slots to fill in the bend around the edge of the top deck.
It's a faff made worse by the skin which is half etched thick and ripples the moment you turn the soldering iron on so near impossible to flood with low melt, the only recourse is a filler of some sort and endless sanding smooth in tight crevices.
I did toy with an overlay that fitted tight up to the skin, in hindsight (and future) I'll do just that.
The slots in the resin core are too big for the vents so I still need to gap fill those as well as tend to other minor details; I also need to add the actual water gauge blob/housing behind the etched face plate.
