It happened to me for the first time today. I tossed a $30 piece rolling stick right into the circular file (aka trash). Within the first 30 minutes I broke 5 metal castings just by assembling them. The final straw was when they so poorly fit together with the plastic pieces that I couldn’t get it together. After 20 minutes of trying to assemble 2 pieces together I gave up
Good thing I only bought 1 instead of 3 like I was planning.
I had zero problems assembling Walthers Heavyweights. (Even with their impossibly small eye rings.) I had no problems assembling the Kibri Cathedral, or the Walthers Bascule. I had no problems putting together Branchline blueprint series cars. I had no problems putting together the blast furnace (outside some mold line issues), or the walther’s round house, or the modern turntable…
But this kit took it way beyond my patience level.
Sort of. I tackled, as green and unknowing as I was, a P2K tanker kit that gave me fits. I finally packaged up what few intact bars and grabs I had not destroyed and gave it to a fellow fine modeler who knew how to put it all right. In fact, he placed brass wire grabs and bars on it for me where they were destroyed. Looks good now, better than I could have done.
RTR is my friend. I have low standards, compared to some I suppose, but I must account only to myself since I pay my bills.
With limited financial resources these days it’s rare for me to throw out anything. Have you retrieved it since your post? Spare parts are always nice to have.
The closest I ever came was one of the DPM kits. No wall was flat or square, the roof didn’t fit correctly, and the detail areas were so small they were almost impossible to paint. I like the look of DPM sturctures when they’re done but they are some of the most poorly made kits I’ve ever put together.
At least DPM tells you up front which wall edges you need to sand flat. Yea, DPM kits are some work to put together. However, if you follow their directions closely, their suggestions do work well. Jim, I’m not implying that you didn’t follow the directions with your kit. I’m just telling you what personal experiences that I’ve had with them.
Upfront, sanding and fitting are a given to assembling DPM kits together. The roof usually has to be cut and fitted to shape - once the walls have already been pre-sanded and assembled. You are right. When the kits are assembled and painted well, they look nice.
My first attempt at a DPM kit (depot) didn’t initially turn out as well as I would have liked, either. Two inside walls didn’t meet at a 90-degree angle and I struggled with cutting and gluing the exterior rafter boards. Since it was early on in my modeling experience, I just chauked it up to the learning curve. (I think it was only the 2nd kit that I had ever put together.)
Jim, I’d encourage you to consider trying another DPM kit before you swear them off for good. The extra work and time is well worth the effort.
Just out of curiosity, which of the kits did you attempt?
Maybe I missed something. What kit was it, and who manufactured it? I’m new enough to this hobby to not know the answer that (seems) apparent to the other posters. I would like to avoid a similar experience.
When I have a similar experience (not “if” , but “when”) I will probably throw the kit in a box and try again later, or use it for parts. We old Scots want to buy cheap, but also can’t stand to throw anything away.
Long time ago, when the Pirate Model Flxibles came out - I got one (that’s when 40 bucks was worth something, I’ll have you know) - I sanded & filed & filled & primed and so on…and the dang thing still looked like absolute crap after all that - very poor fit, wavy lines, window frames not straight - dang. ‘Sadly’ before painting, it had an accident and fell off the bench (well, I was more pissed than sad, and didn’t really try to save it). Ended up salvaging a few parts, and the rest of the bus ended up in the scrap heap (not so much trash - any thin diecast metal can be used as additional scrap in the pile).
Also, the first Walthers ‘resin’ vehicles were utter wastes - yes, I know they were solid filled, but besides that details like the grill/doors/lights were so poorly molded they were wavy, gap-filled, crooked, wildly different levels of relief (some good, some barely there) - I got the oil delivery truck, took a look at the cab, shook my head and tossed it immediately, and kept the tank (which they didn’t screw up too badly).
It was the Front Street building. I knew that, dealing with resin kits, I’d have to do some sanding and fitting but this was way beyond that for a styrene kit . Each wall had a distinct curve. The front wall had a 1/4 inch hump from end to end when laid flat. It’s really hard to sand out that big of a warp. I think it wouldn’t have been so bad if the walls weren’t so thick. After a few hours of sanding, sweating, and swearing, I finally had it where two carpenter’s braces would hold it together so it was somewhat rectangular while the glue set.
The roof wouldn’t fit no matter what I did because the structure wasn’t true in any plane. I finally just traced the roofline and made my own roof from .30 styrene. It really shouldn’t have to be this hard on such a relatively simple structure.
I knew painting would be difficult but the many fine details that make the DPM strucures look so good are also extremely difficult to paint. Since they are all molded in, you need about 5 really fine brushes, a steady hand, and a lot of patience to make it look decent.
I think the end product came out OK as a background building. Here’s a picture:
I think the total amount of time I spent on this building is right up there with kits that were a lot more difficult to assemble. I think the Front Street kit is part of the DPM beginner’s line. I’d sure hate to try one of the hard ones. [:)]
Frustrated with a kit (actually, a dozen identical kits?) Youbetchum!
Tossed 'em? Never!!! Recycled the pieces into something entirely different - so different that not even Sherlock Holmes could deduce what the original source of the parts was.
That was when I stopped buying kits to assemble, and started buying kits to kitbash.
Chuck (modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with modified Athearn BB parts!)
More times than I care to remember although like some of the other posters, I usually don’t throw it all away. I save the useful parts to make something else. An exception was a metal coal mining kit that had to be soldered together. It was my first and last attempt at assembling a metal structure. It required a skills I didn’t have and I all but ruined the piece trying to develop those skills. I didn’t see anything there worth saving so it went to trash can.
This is my first post since being away from the hobby all summer. Golf takes up most of the free time then. Every year I tell myself I’m going to spend a little time in the train room during the summer months but it never happens. The golf game was really bad this year and I’ve threatened to give it up and devote more time to the trains. That’s another vow that I seem to make every year. Of course, model railroading presents its own form of frustrations as this thread shows. Apparently, I am a glutton for punishment.
Yeah i actually ran into that problem yesterday with a woodland scenics cast metal truck, although i did not throw it out the fit is so poor i am not sure if i will ever finish it, and i am not talking about a little flash here and there, we are talking major parts not fitting together well at all, and i not to long ago finished the DPM Night life set in N-scale and while i agree with tstage that when finished they are nice, and the detail is really good, i would rather not have to sand a bunch to get stuff to fit together, 2 of the buildings did not have wall alignment posts for the walls and you needed to make a templete for the roofs and cut them out of really thin styrene, plus make your own roof supports, again once complete they are nice, but a few small things done at the factory would make them much better.
I get frustrated but don’t throw anything out. I messed up an MDC (don’t laugh) tank car kit by thinking the end weights were glued in correctly and putting the ends on only to hear them sliding around in there. I knew this would throw the car off balance so it sits in a parts box, but I still kept the detail parts and trucks. I thought these would come in handy one day (once I squished a boxcar between the wall and my desk, and one of the trucks came in handy). There was also this Accurail 89’ autorack car that failed. Many of the end details fell off and broke and about 3 months later, I’m sifting though some boxes and I find the autorack box. I open it up to look for spare parts only to find a piece of cardboard hiding the autorack’s weight! No wonder it was so light! I mainly don’t run it because my 18" radius curves give it a hard time.
I also have two unbuilt building kits, DPM and City Classics. I just hope they aren’t challenging!
Yep! Walthers 23,000 gallon tank cars. Wasted my cash on 2 of them. Poorly designed. Nothing fit right. When I did finally get them built, they wouldn’t stay on the track. Derailed like crazy. They’re laying in pieces in a scrap box now.
I haven’t done it. My Dad did it once with a Sperry Railcar a few years back because he kept breaking off detail parts. I was somewhat mad at him that he didn’t give it to me so I could sharpen a few modeling skils. [sigh]
