I kept extra parts over the years and glad i did. I bought on ebay a CNW GP 50 with no hand rails and finishing packet for very cheap. I had enought parts to finish this loco when i get it i will always keep parts on hand for cases like this. I hope several of you do the same.
Yes keeping parts even if you cannot imagine what purpose they will serve is often rewarded, even if the ultimate use is to help out a fellow modeler. When I was a young modeler I would botch a project (more often than I care to admit) and I’d be so angry and i suppose ashamed that I couldn’t stand to have the left over parts anywhere in the house, so I would toss them. Now I often wish I had just quietly put them in a plastic bag.
But almost as important as keeping the part is having some notion of what they are a part to. In some respects that is the biggest challenge. Athearn handrails are a classic example of them all looking pretty similar and needing identification.
Dave Nelson
I love extra parts. Walthers is particularly generous with these. I bought a “Centennial Mills” background building, expecting 3 walls and a roof, and it was a complete 4-wall kit with short side walls, along with 4 walls worth of windows, doors and railings. It ended up as 2 complete background buildings, and I’ve still got a bunch of parts left over.
I’m actually starting to be concerned about the amount of shelf space my extra parts are taking up.
The thing is, for many of the locos we have, the time to get extra parts is when they are new on the market. Many of the manufacturers and distributors just don’t keep a long term supply of parts. There are exceptions, but not all that many.
Extra parts to will always mean those extra little details that came with, IHC, Lifelike, et. al building kits in the late 1970s when I was a kid starting out - eventually I painted some up and modeled an antiques store. I recall Bachmann being rather stingy with the extras, don’t recall if Tyco was or not. Also, I recall the kits often came with a sheet of various advertising signs and logos, which, since I didn’t know better meant some of my buildings’ walls took on the look of well-sponsored Nascar racing cars (quick, when in the 1970s did a MR layout photo-shoot feature “cocaine”)
I don’t recall freight car kits of that era really having extra parts, except for the metal stakes for the Athearn Blue-Box flatcars, and a choice of round roof hatches or trough roof hatches for the covered hoppers…(OK, probably other manufacturers’ kits did - hey, Athearn to me was a step up from Tyco and AHM at the time).
I have 56 locos worth of BLMA MU hoses [(-D] not sure how I ended up with so many but who cares, more parts for plain jane pilot atlas locos!
The old Train Miniature flatcar kit came with optional bulkheads for the ends, if memory serves. And the IMWX 1937 AAR boxcar kit, which I think later became Red Caboose tooling although it is also similar to Intermountain in general construction, featured a choice of doors (and no hint as to which was correct for the roadname you chose). Of course the Athearn “covered gondola” did not have to be built using the cover, and similarly the old Varney plastic “covered hopper” was simply their two bay coal hopper with a cover casting, so those covers could be saved and used elsewhere. I have some recollection of a reefer kit that had two styles of ice hatch cover doors, but I no longer recall whose kit it was.
This is decidedly off topic, but on the general subject of “extras.” There was a line of circus wagon and circus flatcar kits, and I no longer recall the make, that routinely came packaged with religious literature inside. Given the amount of swearing you’d do while trying to assemble those kits, it was probably a good idea.
Dave Nelson
i save any extra detail parts from today’s car kits. if i am lucky enough not to destroy a bunch them trying to get them off the sprue then i have a few left over from time to time. i arrange them, still on the sprue in kit boxes sorted by maker-red caboose, p2k, branchline, etc.
you never know when an extra stirrup or grab iron may come in handy. sure beats trying to bend them out of wire.
of course, one can carry this too far. like what am i going to ever do with a couple hundred box car doors that already have the handles and tackboards cast on them?
probably the best thing i saved over the years was all those coupler pockets that came with KaDee number 5’s back when i bought them by the two pair envelope.
Charlie
I have several of them also
I had so many parts left over from the many kits I have assembled over the years and also a lot of scratch building parts (Stairs - Ladders - Vents - Windows&Doors) that I spent more time trying to find them than it seemed to take and build the projects!
I found that the older Walthers Modular Walls Kits came in the clear plastic display packaging which had a tight closing lid! They would hold tons of detail parts!
I gathered up all that I could find from my own projects and friends (as they didn’t want them) and sorted all my parts out into groups.
I labeled the clear plastic boxes and have them on shelves in my Office where I do most of my kit building.
When I need something - I just reach over to the appropriate box to view the contents through the clear package and determine if I have the proper piece I am looking for without having to open up the box.
I has helped speed up my modeling projects and even keeps the room looking half decent!
BOB H - Clarion, PA
I bought the same kit a few years ago, and discovered the same unexpected back wall. I cut it up a bit and added a shallow wing to the building. That gave me room to add a set of Model Power tanks in front so my Country Kitchen bakery can receive corn syrup and molasses for those good Maine dounuts. [dinner]
I have drawers and boxes of parts - I even find a use for them fron time to time.