Why brass instead of resin?

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
1

There was a recent thread about the death/terminal illness/bad cold (depending on your view) of brass equipment in model railroading. One point mentioned was that brass allows the modeler to get prototypes not otherwise available. My other hobby is armor (tank) modeling and for 20 years or so the solution for getting those one-of-a-kind vehicles that would be unprofitable as regular plastic kits has been for a small company - or just one guy - to make them in polyurethane resin. They are more expensive than regular plastic kits but still quite affordable. An even larger market exists for conversion sets that include only the details specific to a particular version or improvements to existing plastic kits, such that converting mainstream kits via evergreen and putty is nearly extinct. Detail-wise, the stuff that’s been available in the last 10 years or so has been incredible, and the construction of newer kits is often easier than injection molded ones.

I know there are few people making resin freight car kits, but why hasn’t there been a “explosion” of kits to reproduce those unusual items that only seem to be available in brass? Is this a kit vs. RTR issue?

KL

2

There is already a lot of stuff available in resin for railroad modelers. Also a lot of model railroaders are not railroad modelers. Meaning they want everything ready to put on the track when they buy it.

Brass has traditionally been the medium for collectors who want railroad specific highly detailed assembled models. These people are very proud that they can afford brass and usually leave their models unpainted so they can show everyone that they have a brass model. Every so often a member of the local club will bring his brass steam locomotives to run and as I recall all are still unpainted.

3

It might be simply due to modelers not being familiar with resin, or thinking that it’s more difficult to work with than plastic. Some of that is true, but if you clean the parts thoroughly, and use CA, it’s not that much different from plastic. BTW, Rail Yard Models (http://www.railyardmodels.com/home.html) has some excellent resin models, as does Wright Trak (http://www.wrighttrak.com). So far, I’ve built RYM’s PC X79 boxcar, and have a Wright Track PC N6A transfer caboose under construction. Both kits are excellent–very little flash, and everything fit like it was supposed to.

4

You don’t understand the history. First of all nothing looks as much like metal than metal. Way back when brass was the standard there was no such thing as resin for hobby purposes. When I was in junior high in the late 50’s and the shop teacher asked me what I wanted to make I showed him a three color plastic letter opener and he said, " choose something else that has at least $15.00 worth of plastic in it"! And that would be at least $100.00 in todays money. Brass was durable, easy to work with and cheap. The missing factor was cheap labor which for many years was Japan, than Korea and possibly in the future China. Plastics were expensive. Remember The Gradutae where the guy tells Dustin Hoffman he has one word for him, “Plastics”. The other factor was the size of the motors which needed all the room they could muster. I have a couple of brass engines that the motor just squeezes into the bolier cavity. It wouldn’t fit if it was resin and the boiler was by necessity thicker. So you have a whole third world industry of basically custom engines where the labor force and the manufacturers use metalworking techniques that have been the staple for close to 75 years now. Ask your question in another 75 years and it will probably be, “How come resin is used for engines?”. Given my choice of an engine in brass or resin with identical details and identical operating characteristics I’d take the brass any day in a heartbeat just from the durability factor.

5

For steam engines (the major part of the brass market), only part of the model (mainly the superstructure) could be resin. The drivers, valve gear, rods, etc would still need to be metal. Since you’re already farming out part of it to an overseas company, might as well do it all there.

Also, locomotive kits have been dying. MDC under Horizon Hobbies is only doing RTR. Most other kit manufacturers seem to have disappeared except for Bowser.

Enjoy
Paul

6

I think I do understand the history, but what about today when there are better materials available? As to the appearance of metal, that only holds true until the part gets painted. (And I have seen plenty of plastic models that looked amazingly like metal.) As an aside, what I think is more important is that the model of a machine looks like a machine: square corners, perfect radii, uniform feature spacing, flat planes, and so forth, regardless of the material under the paint. I have seen plenty of metal models that looked like models, and plenty of plastic models (made from molds cut by machines) that looked like real machines.

In what scale? The mere existence of N and Z scale locomotives show that some quite small motors are possible. I suspect that this is not an insurmountable problem by any means.

OK, I guess my real question is: “Why is brass still used for limited run/limited interest subjects (as opposed to “collectibles”) instead of resin?”

[quote]
Given my choice of an engine in brass or resin with identical details and identical operating characteristics I’d take the brass any day in a heartbeat just from the durability factor.

7

I found that state-of-art resin (at least in tank models) is every bit as easy to work with as most plastic. I’d say that SOTA plastic kits still have the advantage though. The trade off is usually better engineering and easier construction with plastic vs. finer detail and less pieces with resin. Resin almost always had the advantage in subject appeal. However, I think resin kits are getting hurt by the appearance of very good to excellent plastic kits of these esoteric subjects that no one ever thought would be kitted. Who’s going to spend $150 on a resin kit when you can get a plastic one for $30. As a consequence, the real strength seems to be in detail and conversion parts. Most of those seem to be plastic or white metal in model RR.

KL

8

It is partially a kit vs. RTR issue, but it’s also partially technical.

On the kit vs. RTR issue, there are two issues. First, the kits are craftsman quality, which require time and some talent to assemble. Most modelers complain about the time it takes to assemble an Athearn kit (judging by their sales of RTR vs kits), so there are VERY few of us willing to take the time to properly assemble, paint and weather a resin boxcar. And while it’d be nice to see a manufacturer step up to the plate and produce resin steam parts or even entire new boiler and tender assemblies, it’ll never happen: too few people superdetail engines, let alone build them from kits.

On the technical side, casting resin kits isn’t as simple as pouring some Alumalite into a flat mold and bagging the results for sale. The resin freight car manufacturers have VERY expensive equipment for making master molds, precisely mixing epoxies, and vacuum casting the parts. One new technology is the ability to cast hollow cones out of resin, which means that the means to cast resin boilers is now available, but still rare (Sunshine is currently the only resin manufacturer with the machinery in-house; F&C’s new tank car body is cast off-site)

And as for no “explosion” of resin kits, where have you been? There are MORE different freight car styles available in resin than in plastic, brass and wood combined. Add all the products sold by Westerfield, Sunshine, F&C, Sylvan, Smokey Mountain, Kalso, Kitbits, and Wright Track, and you’ve got over 1000 items.

We’ve got the ability to, if not produce entire steamers, at least make resin steam conversion kits, which would contain all the necessary main castings, cabs, major appliances, an

9

I think the problem with resin lays in the cost, because kits start in the $30+ price range,unpainted and needs trucks and couplers, where stoa plastics run around half that with lettering and trucks and couplers. I just checked out prices on three great boxcar kits in resin and the price is over $100 and I still need paint and even decals for one,that’s a lot of money for realistic modeling. Now I know these are one of a kind kits and brass if available would be triple that, it’s still a costly prospect and not everyone wants to shell out that kind of cash.

10

It’ll never happen. Resin is a dying nedium in this hobby, and for one reason: rapid prototyping machines. RP machines (I still don’t quite know how they work) take a piece of artwork and transform it into a 3D, solid, PLASTIC object. Their prices are coming down fast, and their quality is going up. Give it 5-10 years, and any model object will be able to be produced in any scale desired, so long as there’s an autocad drawing for it. You’ll be able to make your own artwork for any specialty car or structure, email it to a manufacturerm, and he’ll be able to mail it to you in 10 days.

In 75 years, nobody will have heard of resin, and modelers will say, “They made WHAT out of metal?”

11

Gotta know how to shop Mike. Most of my 100+ resin freight cars are F&C, and the average cost per car is only $16. Haunt Ebay, and you’ll find Westerfield stuff going for $20.

But your basic premise is correct: resin is at LEAST twice the price of plastic, and takes 4-10 times as long to build. But how many of us really NEED a 500+ car fleet?

12

So resin is state of the art. Ok MTH would have you believe they are too but there is no exodus to dump everything else and switch ( and probably the reason they will fail in theHO market). I have never built a resin kit. It takes different skills and materials and glues than styrene. Drop a resin engine and a brass one. Which do you think is going to have less damage? Brass is stronger and the makers have the tools, experience and the skills. I’ve never heard of a brass engine warping but I sure have with plastics and resin.

13

How true. Funny thing that one of the other evergreen topics in this hobby is cost, but there are few of us who see an advantage in spending 45 minutes to save about 60% of a kit price.

Understand, but again, from my tank model experience, that it isn’t all that fantastic.

[quote]
And as for no “explosion” of resin kits, where have you been? There are MORE different freight car styles available in resin than in plastic, brass and wood combi

14

The current generation of photosensitive plastics that are used by rapid prototyping machines are not structurally strong plastics. It’s not necessary to the process for them to be so. The main use of rapid protoyping machines are to:

verify that your design works in three dimensions
produce a few copies of your design as dummies
produce a prototype to use to make a mold for production, using polyurethane resins , lost plastic casting, or other production technique

None of these reasons requires a strong material.

At present, the state of the art machines are not able to produce detail fine enough to work as scale models at the scales we are interested in. Most detail is in the 0.02 inch range. While the numbers that get bandied about are 0.0005 or less, that just refers to reproducible positioning, not size of the smallest detail to be produced. Check out Pacific Locomotive Works at:

http://www.pacificlocomotive.com/index.html

The driver that is being shown there as an example of their work is O scale, and is a little lumpy for my taste. Sma

15

Kurt - At least when it comes to steam locomotives, efforts done in resin are far, far inferior to those done in brass and still are very expensive. There is at least one current company, whose name I won’t mention, that’s doing limited run resin steamers. In my opinion, they are poor in appearance relative to the same items in brass and have a typical asking price of $500-$600, or about 1/2 to 2/3’s the price for the very same item in much better looking and more durable brass. As one who once upon a time collected brass, as well as who briefly looked seriously into resin locomotives, I have to say that their was little that impressed me about the resin engines and left me strictly sticking with brass for any road-specific models.

Likewise, in my experience, resin castings vary greatly in quality from company to company. A few produce almost flawless castings. But many others suffer from castings that are warped, have pin-holes, have heavy flash, or are easily broken or damaged. Overall, such kits are far from desirable, or even suitable, for most hobbyists, many of whom complain about the “difficulty” of kits beyond the BB level! While resin rolling stock will undoubtedly continue to appeal to a very limited number of experienced craftmen modelers, I’d have to say that they have little futur

16

edkowal wrote: “On another note to this thread, in Great Britain, small manufacturers are producing resin kits for locomotives, and superb they are. But they’re not exactly cheap, and they’re fairly involved to put together. Not very winning aspects for the U.S. market.” Resin locomotive kits are common elsewhere in the world, too. There are numerous manufacturers here in Australia. It would appear that the US is the odd man out as far as resin locos are concerned, and will likely remain that way. Judging from what I see repeatedly stated here, and on other forums, most US railway “modellers” are not modellers at all - they are operators and collectors. Cheers, Mark.

17

They’re already here, at least in a small way. Westerfield’s using a mold for a new circular corrugated end that was milled by a rapid prototyping machine, and another resin company (I want to say Speedwich, but I’m probably wrong) is selling an entire gondola which is cast in RP molds. Once the machines can successfully scale down tot he .010" range, we’ll start seeing entire kits that are nothing but the actual RP work itself. As I said, no more than 5-10 years, and it’ll be the standard way to make short batches of cars, just like aluminium molds are starting to replace steel in the plastics industry.

Sometimes I envy our British modeling friends. They’ve got some FANTASTIC kits over there, in brass, white metal, plastic, resin, and even cardstock, and they pretty much all build up into beautiful models. I really wish we had a DJH on this side of the pond…

18

I’m with you there. If DJH would just make a few smaller US engines . I’ve considered bashing some of their South Africa models to get to where I want to be - the size and general proportions look pretty good. I’d even settle for seeing a revival of the Mantua and Roundhouse steam kits, just to get kit building and bashing started again in this country.

I don’t know if this is still true - I’ll have to call one of these days - but Bowser was offering to do custom casting work, especially in metal. There is also another firm that will convert your plastic piece into a metal casting by using the plastic piece for creating a mold, and then burning the plastic out, and refilling the mold with metal. I’ve heard it works very well for getting a heavier Grandt Line HO/HOn3 25T diesel.

my thoughts, your railroad

Fred W

19

I can honestly say that I am part of the problem. I don’t want to build engines. I have built two so far and the time and money that have gone into them I could have bought painted brass and come out ahead. Not much, but enough to be able afford some of those nice Kadee OS 34’ hoppers.

For car kits, RTR or kit doesn’t matter. If the kit is for my time period, it catchs my attention, and is for a Midwest road, I may purchase it, save tank cars. I hate, absolutely hate building tank cars. So if I see a nice looking RTR tank car for my period of course I will buy it.

As for the crack about todays modelers being RTR more than modelers…I don’t see a lot of ready made benchwork or larger Walthers or DPM kits being pre-built. Given a choice between car/engine kits and layout kits…I’ll take RTR cars and engines over building kits. To me the choice has never been about being able to run my cars or trains right away, but a matter of resource allocation. Sure it costs me a little bit more for an RTR car than a BB car, but the time that I spend assembling umpteen dozens of kits I could have gotten two or three structure kits fitted and detailed and added to the already incomplete layout.

20

fwright wrote: "I’m with you there. If DJH would just make a few smaller US engines