I finished my first Roundhouse kit the other day, and let me say I like’em. After building only Athearn blue box kits for the pure simplicity of them, I decided to try what I’ve heard call here the “next step up” I find them easy to build, and enjoyible to build. Conincidentally, my first car was the 60th aniversery car of MR, that I bought off E-bay.
A happy Noah[:p][:)]
I also built my first MDC Roundhouse kit a few weeks ago. I think they are a great value, and look forward to many more.
MDC kits were the first ones I built back in 1972 when I was starting. I always thought they were pretty nice kits for the money - wish S scale had some.
Enjoy
Paul
MDC Rolling Stock Kit’s are very good, they almost fall together. I’ve put about 30 Old Time cars together in the last few months. and the only problem i had was a couple of the kits were missing some minor parts (screws, coupler covers, and one had wheels, but was missing the trucks). Luckily, as i did a batch buy direct from them, i made sure i bought two undecorated cars just for extra parts and all 30 cars that would run, are running fine.
Tips for MDC cars is to replace the plastic wheels with metal ones, you’ll probably want to replace the Horn hook couplers with Kadee’s too. Some of their kit’s lack some finer detail, but there are parts available from them to super-detail the cars as well.
Jay
I’m just at the moment working on a string of Harriman style coaches by MDC which I bought direct as my LHS has hardly any useful kits in stock. They are nice kits and will make a useful addition to my roster. I have built MDC before and I’m also working on a Boxcab diesel which is a nice model but runs a bit ordinary. A good alternative to Blue boxes and I recently discovered Bowser rollingstock kits which I really like.
I’m also a fan of Roundhouse and feel they on par and even better in some cases better then Athearn. I have 26 ore cars by Roundhouse and find them to be excellent cars.
I have several MDC kits. Boxcars & bulkend flats mostly.
I like them as they are as easy to build as Athearn or Accurail.
As with Jay, I’ve replaced the plastic axles with Proto axles & they made a significant difference in the way the car travels across the rails.
As money premits, I plan on doing this with all my rolling stock.
I did this with an old Rivarossi passenger car. The thing wouldn’t roll 12 inches before grinding to a halt.
I replaced the axles with Proto 33" axles. The same car went about 25’ on it’s own going down about 9’ of 1.5% grade.
Gordon
Free rolling axles make a big difference.
Noah, This is great! I am a big proponant of kit built rolling stock. Doing so is fun, as you have found out. Now, lets get more folks building kits so we can put an end to this RTR madness!
Somewhere in my memory is the idea that Athearn actually does the body castings for MDC at least in HO. When I buy an MDC kit the FIRST thing I do when i get it home is take the metal frame outside and spray paint it a gray-black using a spray can. I let it dry and put it back in the box. That way when I am ready to build the car the metal frame is always painted – and since I tend to build kits on rainy or snowy days when it is hard to paint outside, this works out well.
If you see one at a swap meet — sometime try one of the old (pre 1960) metal kits from MDC/Roundhouse. They build up into a nice car and had good paints jobs as a rule. The trucks were awful back then though.
Dave Nelson
Deschane, I am slowly becomeing to like kits better than ready to run, because I feel more satisfaction from knowing I put together the car. I really enjoy them, and I’m going to start buying more of them. I also like the fact that they are for the most part alot cheaper than R-T-R. This summer, the WSOR paints more cars at there Horicon paint shop (really my work bench).[:D][:D]
Noah[:P]
I remember the glorious feeling in the early '80s (I think), when all of a sudden MDC came out with (then) new prototypes, such as the 50ft Railgon, several different types of 50ft boxcars (many in then-common and quite colorful IncentivePerDiem shortline livery), the 60ft flats and bulkheard flats, the 50ft generic tank cars, bathtub gons, and so on. For those of us used to 1960s era Athearns (Although I think they had the ‘Railbox’ style boxcar model by then), it was a great boost for contemporary railroading at reasonable prices (Walthers was kind stuck in the transition era then - they may even have been still selling depression-era Ulrich hoppers and gondolas)
Many of those MDC ‘modern-era’ models still look good, although of course the molded-on parts do grate a bit.
And yes - Definitely paint the underframes grey/black (grimy black?), and the trucks should be painted rust, brown or grey too (couplers → rust). Flatcars/bulkheads with wood deck I usually go for grey, and then drybrush brown, but if you’re modeling the 1970s when these cars were first built, maybe use brown/natural wood color.
I think I will try them.By the way how do you do the windows on other kits,they had to be glued and the ended up a mess?