I just ordered my first Intermountain kit, a Santa Fe "Grand Canyon Line" boxcar. My questions are one, is it fairly simple to assemble? And Two, does it include trucks? It was $10, so I couldn't resist.
Sort of and yes. You REALLY need a set of flush cutting tweezers (http://www.micromark.com/tweezer-sprue-cutter-despruing-tweezer,8012.html) to trim the grab irons from the plastic sprue and good eyes to glue them in...and patience. If you try to cut the grab irons with just about anything else, they will break in half (but there are spare). I've built dozens of these kits and once you get comfortable with building them, they are not very hard but it takes time to get comfortable. They do come with trucks, but they aren't Micro Train couplers, just dummy couplers. I always replace mine. Oh, and add weight to the car before you glue it shut...they don't have nearly enough weight otherwise.
Jeff is correct on the grab irons. The grab irons are the real weakness of these kits. They are fragile and prone to launching. The holes on the side of the box type cars are not large enough, so, if you are not careful as you try to press them into the car side, they will either break or launch; usually the latter. I found that I had to ream out the holes with a pin vise and glue in the grab irons. Just remember to take it easy with the aeroplane glue . I always use a pin. Funny, I have never had problems with launching grab irons on the gondola kits, just the box type car kits.
Ditto to all of the above...I love these kits (and want a bunch more in the last ATSF "Ship and Travel" scheme!!!)...I use the above mentioned tweezers, a white colored 'captive' work space (to catch and errant 'launches' ), and Tamiya extra thin cement (green cap)...add weight! Bruce
I've built hundreds of these kits and still have about a hundred left. The boxcars aren't difficult, but the reefers could possibly be classified as difficult. I use two stick-on 1/4 oz. tire weights to weight 'em, snip off the talgo coupler box from the truck sideframe, body mount MT Z-scale couplers. I use the stock IM wheelsets, although I'm not too crazy about the outside wheel profile, but they work okay. BUT...NO AEROPLANE GLUE....use a fine brush and Tenax. Even then, ya gotta be careful and use sparingly except on the areas you can glue from the inside. I also snip off the mounting pins on the running boards and glue them directly to the small roof brackets using Tenax. This makes a big difference when either looking at these, or photographing them from the side. As for the fragile grab irons. I find they sorta "smash" instead of disintegrating, cracking in the middle. I carefully slip a #11 knife blade between the broken grab and the body, levering the broken halves of the grab up until they maintain contact in the middle, then I remove the blade and brush on a little Tenax on the entire grab. If the grab is just smashed, this works every time unless you lever up too much with the blade, breaking the ends of the grab and they shoot off into the Twilight Zone. If you find you're having trouble holding the small parts with your fingers, I sand my fingertips with 320 grit paper until the callouses are gone. This solves that problem for me, but makes playing my guitar really painful for a while. Have fun! Cheerio! Bob Gilmore
They are good kits, well worth owning. Just have a very good quality sprue cutter, use glue sparingly, either Ambroid Pro-Weld or Tenax works for me. Build this one to see what tools are required. Then when you get more, take the knowledge gained from Kit #1 and set up what is essentially an assembly line on your work bench. You can turn them out with surprisingly good speed. I use the trucks, but body mount M/T couplers and add weight.
I'm not sure I'll install grab irons. If it looks particularly unsightly I will, but otherwise I'm not picky and I probably lack the skill needed for them.
If you have steady hands, you are fine. Leaving the grabs off, you'll have car sides with holes showing. Not sure how many tools are in your arsenal, but if you own a pin vise, you might gently clean (do not enlarge them!) the mounting holes.
Ahh a blast from the past. I have built a number of those kits and loved the detail, but as everybody has stated installing the grabs etc. can be tricky. I finally ended up visiting my LHS, back when there was one, and purchasing a few very small drill bits just a tad larger that the hole in the car. Drilled everything out and used a smidget of ACC applied with a fine point dental pick to fit them in. They look so much better than other cars when done but in echoing the others those grabs and details are super fragile.
The flat end precision sprue cutters are excellent; at one time they were available directly from IM... Bruce
Having launched more than NASA, I now use fine wire grab irons-they're dirt cheap. I do glue them in place.
I need to get a few more of the IM 3-bay ACF kits. Since I paint them up I like the idea of the separate pieces. I can paint different colors and not have to worry about taping stuff off. If anyone has a few of the ACF kits they could part with let me know. Guy on the bay is trying to sell them for almost double MSRP and doesn't want to back down (thus why they aren't selling).Thanks.
You might need a prescription from your doctor... for Zanax... :=) Those tiny fragile parts o those narrow sprues will create unpleasant issues without the right tools and extreme care and patience. Weight needs to be added... you can use small washers inside the boxcar affixed over the trucks. About a quarter ounce per side. Use Walthers Goo. I over weighted my 50 foot double door cars... they are probably are a scale 200,000 pounds. I miscalculated the weight and had ready glued the roofs on. Sent from my ALCATEL ONE TOUCH Fierce using Tapatalk
One source of weights is to find a shop stocking Pinewood Derby supplies. The have some packages of weights dived into .25 oz. sections and they will usually fit in most boxcars, reefers, and covered hoppers. Rather than a flat shaped they have a domed top and flat bottom.
The IM kits I have been seeing in eBay pictures see to show that the box car and reefer roof castings are all bowed upward to some degree. Is this a generic problem with the IM kits? Is it easily solved with gluing?
It's fairly easy. Work in sub-assemblies which IIRC are not exactly what the instructions say. So, add the grabs and the boards to the ends before gluing the ends to the body. Add the underframe rodding etc. and grabs before gluing on the ends. I clean out all the mounting holes for the grabs with a #80 drill. This can leave the hole slightly large, but using the liquid cements noted above will seal the hole. The factory uses tube glue BTW. Glue from the back/inside and use a cheap small-point paintbrush to touch a tiny amount of glue to the spot and let it wick in. The Ambroid brush for example is too big. I hold the grabs in place with a thin vertical strip of scotch tape. The tape is sticky enough that it can pull up a grab, but that tells you that you didn't glue it securely. The tweezer cutters are great for small parts like the grabs from the sprues. I find they get dull fairly fast and so need sharpening. The Xuron cutters are better in that they stay sharp for a long time and you can cut through sprue to get access to things like the brakewheel. Reconditioned/resharpened ones are available to save money. But the Xuron shears can fling parts into space. It might help to put sprue, cutter and hand in a big enough clear plastic bag so you can find a launched part. Yes, the kits come with I/M trucks and wheels. The wheelsets are different in that they are made to roll on the axle points and not the cones. So the occasional points with flash will not roll well. Hope you find this fun enough so you can build the fleet cheaply. Even adding M/T trucks, you're still ahead on current cost. It's fairly common because it's thin for an injection molded piece. Gluing and clamping will solve it as BoxcabE50 notes. A lot of the boxcar roof warping can be remedied by gluing and clamping the roofwalk in place first.
Just remember to add the weight before putting the roof on... these models are too light without the added weight.hboy:
