Peter Clark BR Class 419 MLV kit
I bought one of the first of these kits at the MIGO 2008 exhibition at Chester, in fact it was so new that a number of castings were not included as Peter had not received them back from the manufacturer and I was given them at Guildex a few months later.
The kit comes in a stout cardboard box which will hold the completed kit without any bother. The etches are in 15 thou brass and the castings are mainly white metal. Motor, gears and wheels are not included, but are available from Peter. The instructions are 'generic' to other Southern Multiple Units and therefore a certain amount of research has to be done before commencing any work. I had already done quite a bit, so it was not a problem. There was a list of the etches and castings but no drawings or sketches were in the included showing identification/location of the castings in particular. There were several pages of coloured photos showing details on the test model, but unfortunately, my copies were unreadable. The quality and fit of the etches was very good and that of the whitemetal castings was reasonable - no duff ones.
I produced my own location drawings and commented on/amended the instructions as I went, most things were obvious and would not present any problems to the average modeller, the main thing was that the aperture for the motor was nowhere near big enough and there was no mention of this in the instructions. and at the end of the day, was quite happy with the result.
During the construction phase, I had a few telephone conversations with Peter and things were sorted out quickly. As a result of these conversations, I not only receiveda better quality set of the detail model photos, but also a CD with over 100 detail photos of one of the prototypes, which as you can imagine was a bonus.
Having generated so much material during the build of my model, I then went the next step and re-wrote the instructions and produced a full set of casting identification and location drawings and handed them to Peter on a CD when I saw him at the following Guildex - when I bought another kit - the subject of the Workbench thread
I hope that I have not put anyone off as at the end of the day, you get a good model without too much hassle and at a reasonable cost.
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regards
Mike