I see these on E-bay all the time but never in my LHS. Has anyone ever bulit one?
Link is not the only one I am thinking about, more of the maker and there other kits.
Are they on par of a Walthers kit or DMP?
Cuda Ken
I haven’t built one but I’ve got a pile of them in the basement from when Hobby Lobby clearanced them out several years ago. I’ll be watching the answers you get with interest.
Hi Ken,
I have not made one of these kits either, but it looks like a decently made kit and certainly at that price on e-bay it would be worth a shot. On the main RDA web site is says that it used Tichy windows, so they have included some of the better quality window moldings with the kit. The last couple of Walthers kits I made had slightly warped wall sections, so I can’t imagine this would be worse. The fact that the windows and doors are separately applied is a good thing.
I was speaking with Ken at K-10 just last week about higher-end structure models and he feels that there is not much of a market for them with his client base. It may explain why he does not have a very large inventory of structures of any kind?
I agree with Simon… For the ebay price, you can hardly go wrong, even if you wind up doctoring it up a bit… I had a couple of their kits several years ago… I think around the time Hobby lobby decided to ditch them… It was not what you would call an easy kit… But it wasn’t like building Hoover Dam out of match sticks… It was one of the higher quality kits I have built and Ihave built something from every manufacturer, or so it feels. Though this kit does seem to have a lot of pieces… I say go for it…
I have built several of these and can say that, while RDA kits have considerable potential for the more serious modeler, most require significant work regarding the fitting, matching, and finishing of the parts. These kits often contain unnecessary extra parts (probably associated with other RDA kits) and some parts that need re-working to make them fit. These are not beginners kits that will fall together into showpiece layout models.
Here’s the RDA kit somewhat like the one from eBay, finished out, on my layout. It was no simple weekend project.
CNJ831
I have 3 of RDA’s kits, but have not built them yet. I have kitbash plans for them, but the layout where they are going is not ready for them yet. There are a lot of detail parts.
As you can see from CNJ’s rendition, they have a lot of potential, but I think (like any model structure) the time you spend painting it will determine how it eventually looks on the layout.
Quick hijack.
CNJ831, that is a really NICE picture!
Perfect viewing angle, lighting color temperature perfect for a fall day, weathering excellent, on the loco, flat, building…
Maybe…hardly even worth mentioning, but just maybe a thin gray wash on the stonework to pull some of the vivid color out of the odd stones, and not even that if it’s been sandblasted or pressure washed lately…
Love the way the edge lighting highlights the stonework on the side, and I’d say a master mason laid that stone, and had a hand in making that model.
That’s one of the best model railroading stills I’ve seen, ever, up there or surpassing that one of the massive Appalacian coal mine that’s been posted here.
Hope you kept the raw file for that one, it’s a keeper, and possibly a cover, in my opinion.
/Hijack mode off.
Some of their kits used to be ertl! And all building kits require some reworking (note I said building as in stucture as I have had a few car kits that went together without fuss).
CNJ is absolutely correct. I also built the same model and, to say the least, it was a bear. The instructions are very poor, the injection molded parts have lots of flash, and there wasn’t one wall or roof panel that was square with the others. The small parts come on one giant sprue and it’s easy to break one thing while trying to get another. As CNJ said, there are also lots of parts that have nothing to do with the model you’re building so you spend a lot of time head scratching trying to figure out what parts you’re supposed be using. After a lot of swearing, sweating, cutting, sanding and de-gluing wrong parts, it does build into a nice model but you’d better have a lot of patience and experience before you tackle one.
Thanks for all the answer’s. So it takes some tinkering that is fine. Are the parts in color, I like the detail of the DMP kits but till I get better I am not up the pin point painting I need to do.
Simmon as far as K-10 trains not having the high end kits, that I understand. There are 2 kits I love to have but cannot pry out the $50.00 to $90.00 out of my wallet.
Cuda Ken