Has anyone recently purchased Walthers Ashmore Hotel, the clear plastic windows that I received with the kit are covered with flashing where they were held in the molds or whatever you would call it. Each glass pane has 4-5 areas of flashing to be removed to make the windows usable. I have contacted Walthers and requested a new set Of window panes in the meantime. I was just curious if this is an isolated incident or is this standard for this particular kit. No where in the instructions does it mention anything about excessive falsh on the windows. FYI, there are 120 window panes on the Hotels so it’s just not a minor issue. Just wanting to vent my frustrations. I am now waiting to hear back from Walters about this issue.
Guess it depends on how long the kit has been in production. The older the molds get, the worse the flash gets.
–Randy
I have built more than 1/2 the structures I will have but left the windows out awaiting getting after the lighting project. Along the way I of course noticed the variety of materials provided in the kits. I recently used some 0.005" clear glossy acetate on a re-do of Athearn hevyweight cars (as suggested by a forum member) and consider it a great improvement over the thick plastic windows. So, perhaps consider not using the kit windows and adopting your favorite window material for your structure kits.
http://www.dickblick.com/products/grafix-clear-acetate-sheets-and-pads/
Have you considered replacing the windows with real glass microscope slide covers? They are around an inch square and look amazing. I’ve seen some excellent models that were built using them and decided to use them myself. They are very realistic and the thickness is more prototypical. You can buy them online. One box will last you a while.
The trickiest thing is getting them to snap/break if you need them smaller. I found a tool to score them and snap them. It works about half the time but I’ve found that most of the incorrectly broken pieces are used eventually. One day, when my layout gets that far, I’ll add the buildings and take some pics. Until then, I’m sure there are some forums out there on using slide covers. I’m thinking this is where I first heard about them.