An offshoot of the 'How bad are Farish and Dapol?' thread, continued here for the benefit of Roy L S and anyone else interested...

This whole question of loco kits - even with the higher standards possible with 3D printing, etching etc, how many people would still be interested these days in building their own locos?  Twenty years ago you didn't have a lot of choice as the RTR offerings were a very limited range and pretty basic. And with a bit of care and patience you could build, say, a Gem 4F which was no worse in finish and detail than a Farish Black 5. But now with the huge range and museum-standard detail and finish of modern RTR, are there really that many people who would be prepared to have a loco on their layout which looks frankly crude and amateurish compared to the ones they have just bought and plonked on the track? And aside from pre-Grouping locos which are a bit of a minority taste, where are the obvious gaps in the range of RTR locos that need a kit to fill them?

I'm starting to think this hobby has changed a lot since I was last involved.  It has become a lot more inclusive, in that you don't need to have any particular skills to have a good variety of near-perfect (at least in looks) locos and rolling stock.  But perhaps the age of bodgers and fiddlers is over.  If that is the case I can't help feeling we have lost something.

I am of the same opinion. All those years ago you were lucky if you got anything BR N gauge. These days I would be only interested in a kit for something unusual... The Bleeder, for example.

The reason I left the British side of the hobby many years ago was the complete dissatisfaction with loco kits.  In those days I was in OO after a disappointing start in N.

Not many people, including myself, could successfully build a loco kit and get it running to a reasonable standard.

With the advent of very good quality RTR (generally) the bodgers and fiddlers have turned their attention to other aspects of the hobby.  Super detailing, weathering and scenery to name a few of the things that they now do.  Previously, due to the time taken to build things these aspects were generally glossed over.

I think what I am saying is that the bodgers (bugger the spelling checker has just changed it again!) and fiddlers now do it in different aspects of the hobby.

Kind regards

Geoff

I have only returned to the hobby in the last 12 months....as the off the shelf new locos and coaches are now so detailed and to be fair with a pretty good selection of the era i am into..br blue diesels...i have no inclination or time for building rolling stock...the most difficult and demanding bit for me will be trying to produce realistic scenery and settings for the models..this will take me years I think of fiddling and bodging and learning as I go..so I agree that maybe bodgers have moved onto the scenics more than the rolling stock

Interesting question. 

I like the idea of a versatile 0-6-0 chassis that could be used for a number of loco kits but, as others have said, I'm a little concerned that the finished object would look poor compared with modern RTR locos and stock.  I have disposed of most of my Poole-Farish locos because they look out of place next to their Bachman Farish equivalents.

When it comes to building stuff I've limited myself to buildings, scenery and the occasional wagon kit.

Buildings tend to be assembled as per the instructions (except for the small signal box on my station platform, where I cut down the base slightly) although I've applied paint and washes to hide the white edges and tone down the colours.  At some point I'll try more complex scratch building/kit bashing.

I've had to figure out building the landscape as there's simply no "ready to plant" option.  I wasn't expecting to enjoy it but it has proved to be quite satisfying as bits of wooden board and insulating foam start to take on the appearance of a landscape.

Peco wagon kits are a nice, cheap way to 'bulk up' a goods train, they aren't as good as the latest RTR stuff from Dapol or Farish but they're good enough for most of my needs.  I also find I don't need to worry about getting a perfect paint finish or reproducing an intricate colour scheme with lining - a few quick coats of matt grey and some more dustings of 'dirt and grime' and it is ready to go.  At some point I'd like to tackle something more ambitious.

I quite fancy having a go at the class 128 DPU that I've seen on here that uses the Dapol class 121/122 chassis.  But I think it is a bit more complex than just assembling a kit.

i have never thought of kit building a loco but i would love to try it  what do you get in a kit ? do you get all the stuff to complete it

It depends on whose kit you buy and how detailed you intend to make your model - the last one I built had separate handrails, lamp irons, lamps, fire irons, fall plate reversing lever, crew and although they were supplied in whitemetal, a brass chimney and safety valve cover -and of course a loco chassis and tender wheels had to be sourced to complete the basic model. I have 3 more to build at the moment and 2 bodies that need a few extra details like handrails and lamp irons. the point of all this labour? I thoroughly enjoy building locos and rolling stock and all 5 (Bodies included) are not available ready to run and I very much doubt that they will be in the future - oh I forgot the 3 diesel loco bodies to paint all the previous stuff is steam.
and after that? well maybe a trip into slightly uncharted territory - an etched brass kit

Best of luck

Alex

Sounds like a nice comprehensive kit - what loco is it? You never get glue, paint or transfers, but otherwise the contents vary a lot, from the kit described above to a few misshaped whitemetal castings and a smudged photocopy set of instructions which appear to refer to a different kit altogether. Building a loco kit is something everyone should try at least once. What's the worst that can happen?

Just to give an alternate view here there are those of us who have always 'made do' with what is available and would NEVER consider kit-building a loco as even if the skills can be learned the motivation cannot 

When I was into N gauge as a teenager I bought what was available RTR in Beatties and that was that, if I wanted a particular loco but it wasn't made then I did without. The same mindset exists today - The DMUs on my current layout may not be exactly region-accurate, but it's all we have and I certainly wouldn't sit for hours trying to construct some obscure DMU only to find it didn't meet my own standards of finish  So going back to the original post yes it has become more inclusive with the bigger range of RTR stuff, but that can only be a good thing for keeping N gauge going and as already debated, there will always be the "bodgers and fiddlers", they'll just be bodging/fiddling some other aspect of model railways


Paul

Quote from: Sprintex on June 19, 2014, 11:01:09 PM
Just to give an alternate view here there are those of us who have always 'made do' with what is available and would NEVER consider kit-building a loco as even if the skills can be learned the motivation cannot 

Paul

That's fair enough.  This hobby is whatever individuals want it to be, which is one of the great things about it.  But I do think that by sticking purely to RTR people are missing out on the bit of the hobby that has given me more fun than any other.  If you build (or convert / modify) a loco yourself, and it works, that's really something to be proud of. So what if it doesn't look quite as neat and crisp as the ones you bought? You built it. It's yours and there is no other one exactly like it, anywhere.  Exhibit A:



Without that part of the hobby, once you've finished your layout scenics and exhausted the operational possibilities (usually pretty limited on a small layout) what then?  All you can do is keep buying more and more new stuff from Farish and Dapol, to get that short-lived buzz of having something new to run. And eventually, just spending money on new stuff has to get boring. At which point the little trains get packed away for good, the layout sold or put in a skip, and people drift away from railway modelling and take up golf instead.

Building stuff yourself has always been at the heart of this hobby, and locos and rolling stock are the bit of any layout that most of us are most interested in (otherwise we'd just build model villages with no trains).  If the quality of modern RTR is really putting people off having a go at building stuff themselves, then I worry that railway modelling may be dying from the roots up.

I have a whitemetal kit for an 04 shunter which is still in it's box after 20 years. Now that Farish have an RTR model available, will it ever get built? I don't think so.

Back in 1977 I built a Peco 'Jeanette 009 kit which I mounted on an Arnold chassis. It ran OK but looked horrible because of my paint job. Plus it never got a chimney 'cos that's where the screw was to get the chassis off.

That's my one and only foray into loco kits, and will be the only one, I'm afraid.

Unless, as I posted earlier, someone produces a 'Leader'..... 

Quote from: belstone on June 20, 2014, 07:19:01 AM
Without that part of the hobby, once you've finished your layout scenics and exhausted the operational possibilities (usually pretty limited on a small layout) what then? 

Build layout No.2

That's exactly what I plan to do. Once the current one is finished (ha ha, that's a good 'un - finished ) and hopefully attending a show or two then construction of the next one will start, it's already planned Apart from utilising a few of my current trains I'll need a few more for the next one - another shopping list


Paul

PS: As for golf, been there done that Sold the clubs on Ebay or else they would have ended up in the nearest lake!

I agree that kitbuilding can be fun but it can also be daunting until you get some experience.

If you want to try your hand, maybe start with some of the wagon kits provided by the N Gauge Society. These are a good introduction to kit building as they are supplied complete with things like wheels and transfers. You will still need to supply glue and paint as most can be finished in more than one livery. Some of the bsic ones are very straight-forward and require no more skill than assembling an airfix kit.

Once you have gained some experience and confidence, you can try more complex kits involve metal or making coaches or even locos.

The class 128 parcels railcar is actually not a very difficult kit. Part of the reason for this is that is simply sits on a normal Dapol class 121/122 chassis that requires no modification. You take the 128 body kit, paint it and then swap it with the Dapol body. Several of the liveries are simple to apply such as all-over rail blue. If you are not sure about the quality of your painting, you can just paint the roof grey and apply bodyside vinyls for the livery from Electra Railway Graphics.

Here are 2 examples from opposite ends of the kit building spectrum. First is an NGS (ex-parkwood) kit for a China Clay wagon. This took less than 30 minutes to build and not much more to paint. Second is a class D600 Warship which includes resin bodyshell, whitemetal mogies sides that I sourced myself and etched plates from shawplan.

I agree, the Parkwood wagon kits are an excellent place to start.  Cheap, easy to build and with a Peco chassis no worries about whether they will run properly.  As a step up from that you can try something like a Parkside-Dundas kit where you have to assemble the chassis yourself.  About three-quarters of my wagons are Parkwood kits, with transfers from CCT.  I don't think they look out of place next to the Farish cattle vans and brake van that I bought recently. (The two behind D6134 are not yet finished.)

D600 is very nice indeed, and reminds me that I really ought to finish the paintwork and transfers on D6134...

"That's fair enough.  This hobby is whatever individuals want it to be, which is one of the great things about it.  But I do think that by sticking purely to RTR people are missing out on the bit of the hobby that has given me more fun than any other.  If you build (or convert / modify) a loco yourself, and it works, that's really something to be proud of. So what if it doesn't look quite as neat and crisp as the ones you bought? You built it. It's yours and there is no other one exactly like it, anywhere."

I couldn't agree more with that post beltsone (sorry, but the predictive spelling on my ipad keeps changing your name to belts on!) it's what you want it to be. Each to their own.

I'm happy to see you have ventured into the kit market Karhedron. I'm especially into the mechanisms "under the body", but I can see why some people just want "plug and play". It's just we each get different things out if the hobby and we cannot say "this is right, or that is right etc etc).

Now, as for kit badhing, bodging, fiddling, whatever it's called, are there chassis you can build yourself. Someone below mentioned something. Was that you Karhedron?

Dan