That’s always been my main argument for building from kits. Of course back when I started in model railroading, kits were cheaper than RTR and on my budget, it was kits or nothing.
To this day I have no qualms about taking any of them apart and fixing them, kit or RTR origin.
“Arbour,” he hears. “Arbour,” he thinks. “Oh, Arbour,” he says and goes running away like an insane person. The Arbour kits are really a tough nut to crack. My most experienced kit building, scratch building, modeling friends are afraid of those.
You hear a lot of horror stores about those kits. I remember reading about one poor guy who put in many hours on a Arbour kit. On its maiden voyage it began losing parts along the right of way. [xx(]
While Mantua and Bowser got it right in regards to soft metal kits, Arbour got it about as wrong as you can. I doubt if Bowser is stupid enough to ever re-release one of the former Arbour kits without some serious retooling.
Jim
Well, seems kind of obvious when you look at the big picture. Most major companies are focusing on HQ RTR stuff and kits are not so popular anymore (at least in terms of sales).
The common sense interpretation is that most money is going to the RTR stuff because it is nice, it is affordable enough, and those buyers probably have little time or desire to build kits. I know that I’ve built any number of kits in the first 20-30 years of my hobby years - age 10-30something and like most people, I had way more kits than I would probably ever build. The hand writing was on the walls and I was glad that I could obtain nice, detailed and accurate models (if I researched them anyway) so my back log of kits would not continue to get larger. I’m not abashed to say I’d rather model a RR rather than build models individually. I still have a number of kits to build when the urge hits me.
i heard something even worse while talking today with dan on yardbirdstrains.com, he says that all of the metal kits built by bowser are discontinued due high price of metal and non builders due to rtr locomotives[V], i just when i got back into model railroading and felt pride as to building my own kits.
the only thing that he suggests get 'em while their hot
And me without any money![banghead] I was hoping to get a couple of their kits in the future!
When Arbour Models went belly up back in the late '70s their dies came into possession of a guy from either Sedona or Prescott Valley, Arizona; at the time I was still putting together die-cast lokes and, at one time I had been interested in acquiring one of their Allegheny kits. Shortly before the original owners of Arbour Models threw in the towel I had mentioned to my local’s proprietor about getting one of these 2-6-6-6 models and he told me without elaborating that I really didn’t want one. When I ran into the then-current owner of the Arbour dies and inquired about when he was going to resume production he gave me a strange look and remarked that they weren’t worth putting back into production. I heard later on that some of the frames found in some of their kits were frequently severely warped and torqued and some of their boiler shells took about a ten degree downward pitch at mid boiler. Surprisingly there was a guy in the club I belonged to at Lajes Field in the Azores who had built an Arbour kit and rather liked it; Arbour’s main pain appears to have been erratic quality control.
I was not aware that Bowser had come into possession of these dies but I don’t expect to ever see any of them on the market.
There was another company doing business about this same time called TLC - The Locomotive Company. I never did hear what happened to them; it seems to have just vanished into thin air sometime.
Jim;
That was probably me that you read about. I had spent almost 18 months building this kit. At the time I had only a short (6’) test track and the Allegheny would run well on it. I had taken it to the club at the Chattanooga Terminal, and at that time they allowed you a chance to run your own equipment on the layout. As soon as the loco had moved about 8’ down the yard lead, it started shedding parts worse than a 1959 Rambler driving down the freeway in 1985. I took it home and disassembled it. I packed it up and forgot about it for almost 4 years. Funny thing is, the parts pretty much disintegrated over that time due to the “disease”. Even the drivers swelled, and cracked the tires as they dissolved away into powder. One of the claims of the company was that their alloy was stronger than zamac. May have been, but it had the disease worse than some models I have seen from the 1950’s.
Except for the axles, gears and motor, the entire model, including the valve gear, was this “zamac”. There was no way a complicated model like the Allegheny could have stayed together made like that, if it was to be ran regularly. If the drive rods and valve gear and hangers had of been made like the Bowsers were, I believe that it could have been made into a fantastic model.
Got one of the kits and they were a bear to build as well. A friend of mine had bought 4 sets of the kits. The mech, the boiler, and the tender were all separate kits. It did allow you a great deal of “freedom” to put together a model from 1900-1920 prototypes. The kit I got was for a SRR G- class 2-8-0. The kit did assemble well if you were very careful, but the side rods were the most brittle castings I’ve ever seen. Mine were all cracked. I had to build my own rods. I am not satisfied with those and will see if I can come up with some better ones. The mechs on the locos of the friend I got mine from, finally died but since his boiler and tender were still in good shape, he put a MDC Old Time 2-8-0 mech under his and its still running strong. I’ll have to take some photos of it and see what yall think!
Carey:
I thought it was someone on this forum. Sorry about the model and thanks for repeating the story.
I came real clo
Hello OK guys I have been back in the hobby for 3 years now so I missed a lot . I know most of the steam kits are not made any more but is there any one left that makes them beside Bowser ? And if know one is buying kits will everything be RTR one day ? Are we on the way to buying are layout in one big box ? Just paint it and some detail and you are set . Don’t get me wrong I have a bunch of RTR stuff but I really like building it to. I am now stating to get in to scenery and like it but not that good yet.Working on kits helps it easer to pant parts then the hole thing or have to take a new loco a part to do it. It just seems to me we lost part of the hobby. Have a nice day Frank
This is, indeed, dire news! I would hope that it were just a rumor but, unfortunately, I fear your information may be correct. Somehow or another, I just cannot fathom a model railroad hobby without Bowser die-cast steamers. I wonder if Bowser did not see the handwriting on the wall when they purchased Stewart a few years back.
I don’t really have an immediate interest in returning to HO Scale but my 67 year old fingers are getting just a little arthritic and I may have to give some serious thought to doing just that in the future. I had always considered that, if I did decide to return to HO Scale, I would build my fleet with die-cast kits and that, automatically, infers Bowser.
I was prompted to google Hobbytown of Boston to inquire as to their status; things are not well in that theater also. Apparently Bear Locomotive has suspended operation and is selling down it’s Hobbytown of Boston stock and it looks seriously like that name is also going to soon disappear. The last I heard Tiger Valley is still in business and, of course, there is always MDC/Roundhouse and Model Power periodically reintroduces one of the Mantua kits but, to the best of my knowledge, those are the last of the die-cast kit builders.
“THE TIMES, THEY ARE A’CHANGIN’”
Cjcrescent, I appreciate your info on TLC; those people just seem to have ridden off into the sunset without a fair-the-well. I remember peeking at one of their kits one time; sure did seem to be a lot
I think there are some small obscure steam kit makers out there, but they are not as big as the MDC, Mantua, Bowser.