I finally won a Campbell’s coaling tower on E-bay. There were sure a lot of people who wanted these. I have been bidding for months. I have been sniped, out bid and overwelmed by maximum bids. I love playing with ebay, and this time I won.
NOW, has anyone built this. There are a lot of little pieces. It looks like a hoot, but some experience will probably make it even more fun.
I am currently working on Rusty Stumps’ water tank. That is surely a hoot. I keep remembering how much I like wooden models. They are a nice break from Terra forming
When I got back into the hobby many moons ago I started building some Campbell kits to get the feel of craftsman kits and to gain exerience in model structure building. I started small, worked up to the coaling tower. I don’t recall too much, as it was a long time ago.
One thing that struck me was the instructions referring to the particular pieces of stripwood to use in various places. Seems to me I got confused several times because they identified the wood by its actual dimensions (1/8" by 1/4") and sometimes by its scale dimensions (2’ by 1’). I didn’t have any supply of stripwood of my own on hand, and I had to remove several of the larger vertical pieces when I later discovered I had used the wrong ones. These strips were needed for later assemblies.
Campbell marks (or used to) the different sizes of kit stripwood with colored ends, but some of this was lost when I prestained it all, or cut off the end with the color. So keep an eye on which sizes you are using, maybe with a scale ruler.
It was a lot of work and a great learning experience, working through the steps one at a time. Since I didn’t have a layout and the tower was not suitable for use on the modules I was working on, I later sold the completed unit on eBay.
Good luck with the kit, please keep us advised of your progress!
I believe it was the Campbell’s Coaling Tower that I put together almost thirty years ago; it was wood but there were a lot more manufacturers of wood kits in those heady days of yesteryear.
If you have never assembled a wood kit they provide a memory to be cherished; I do most of my scratchbuilding - in N Scale - using wood but I do remember that I goofed this one up - it was my first wood kit - and I had to scratch various pieces together because of gluing malfunctions. I did considerable better on my next endeavor!
GO SLOW! FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS TO THE LETTER! AND EXERCISE CAUTION WITH YOUR GLUEPOT!