I have been working on the interstate fuel and oil kit and find myself with some odd spare parts. These parts have no corresponding part number on the instructions but have a part number on the sprues. I wonder if anyone else has had these with this kit? One part is a solid beam with five equal spaced indented holes on one side. Another few parts all look like lockboxes of some sort (similar to what you find on a house for sale hanging from a doorknob outside in the real world).
Also, has anyone else had a problem with the support posts to the piping leading from the pump house to the oil tanks? They seem really flimsy and I want to replace them with styrene supports so advice would be helpful.
Lots of kit manufacturers use common sprues for several different kits. Given the cost of making the moulds, it is much cheaper to use a common sprue with many parts on it then it would be to make several individual sprues with only the necessary parts for each kit. I am currently working on a pair of Kaslo Shops CP cabooses. They include two full sprues of Tichy brake parts but the kit only requires a few pieces from each. Heck, where do you think spare parts come from?[;)]
By all means replace the pipe supports if you don’t like them. Evergreen Scale Models and Plastruct offer tons of styrene profiles. Just remember that you are working in scale. If the supports are too big, it will look toy-like.
I’m often happily surprise by the extra parts in Walthers kits. I opened the box from the Centennial Mills background building, expecting a standard 3-wall kit, and found that it came with the fourth wall, including all the windows and trim parts. That will end up as a second building on the other side of the layout.
Yes, I too have had the “extra parts” thrown in on some Cornerstone kits - and like previously mentioned they are likely from a common sprue that is used for a number of kits.
When I say the title of this posting I thought it was about not being able to get spare/replacement parts - which is a battle I’ve fought with Walthers more than once.
Not only does Walthers not carry or supply spare parts for its own kits, but lately it is even tough to get them to answer Customer Service emails.
My sense is that Walthers only cares about being a distributor to other hobby supply retailers and cares very little about the individual consumer, sorry to say.
That used to not be the case.
On the other hand, I recently contacted Atlas for some missing parts on some turnout kits and got an immediate positive response. Same for Athearn.
The extra parts are great so you can modify the kit you are working on or save them for another kit. I got the Paper Mill kit a couple weeks ago and some of the extras was a couple of smoke stakes that I used to make the paper mill more of an industrial manufacture building, even though I not sure yet of what I am going call it or the type of industry.