PLEASE READ BEFORE ORDERING
Our card kits have gained a high reputation, and many repeat orders, which is a testimonial to our satisfied customers, but we find that a few purchasers have not bothered to read the write up.
a) The kits are printed on card, and are not READY-TO-RUN plastic or metal models.
b) Because the subjects we cover often have very limited sales, pre-cut card is NOT possible without increasing the price to prohibitive levels. This means YOU have to cut out the parts, including any windows, doors etc. If you are looking for a “SHAKE THE BOX AND IT FALLS TOGETHER” KIT, then our kits are DEFINITELY NOT for you. If you are prepared to do quite a lot of work, then you will end up with a model that has far more detail than the majority of the throw it together kits.
c) We use quite thin 160gsm card for our kits, and there are several reasons for this. Partly this is to keep costs down, but there are more significant reasons. If you look at most kits, the windows are recessed far more than they should be due to the thickness of the material, and beading or other overlays are also much too prominent, so are either omitted by kit designers or are grossly over-scale. With the thin card we use, you can get it RIGHT, but it is more work for us to design and for you to build.
d) Anyone knows that you can’t bend card in two planes, so domed roof ends are “out” on a kit. – WRONG – with the thin card WE use, it will deform to permit domed panels. By using a multi-layering technique we can cover items that are quite impracticable in heavier card. We tried various thicknesses until we found what will work. Another benefit is that two or three layers of thin card, when glued together are MUCH STRONGER than one thicker piece of card and are less likely to sag or deform.
e) With thin card, we can add a lot more detail. For example our Ramsey water tank kit depicts a wooden tank that is very weathered with rotten wood. The colour artwork on all four faces is an exact match for the original, and with multi-layering you get 3D decayed wood in full colour. How many other kits do you know that offer that ????
TO SUMMARISE – IF YOU EXPECT A KIT YOU CAN THROW TOGETHER IN FIVE MINUTES, THEN YOU WILL NOT LIKE OUR KITS. If, on the other hand, you are prepared to take some time, you can build a delightful model, and have a look at the photos of the kits in our range. The display model is built up from one of our kits, but you need to take time and put in some effort.
Best wishes
Robert & Elena
An “Elro” HO Gauge CARD Model Kit by Elena & Robert Hendry which builds up into one of the fascinating traction orange liveries refrigerator or reefer cars of the Illinois Traction System. This large mid-Western interurban was built up under William B McKinley in the early 1900s, and was one of the largest and best run of the US interurbans, and was one of a handful of lines to operate its own refrigerator or reefer cars. The nine vehicles were built by American Car & Foundry Co in 1907, and were a fascinating blend of interurban car building practice and steam railroad reefer boxcar design. Originally colored green, they went into the long lived tangerine colour of Illinois Traction in which our kit is available.
The American interurban has always been popular with modellers, but as a minority interest, kits or imported etched brass equipment, have always been understandably expensive because of the low production runs that manufacturers can expect. The high cost and complexity of such models, superb though they are, is daunting to many modellers wishing to enter the traction field. In September 2007, we launched our first kit for the Manx Electric Railway, which was a British interurban. At that time there were just two kits in OO scale (both for the same vehicle) and nothing in O scale, as the MER had attracted hardly any trade support in over a century. Within four months, we had kits for no fewer than TEN MER vehicles in our range, and have customers who had bought every kit as it came out, and were demanding more. Following the wholly unexpected response to our North Shore electric loco, we have added a kit for this delightful reefer to our range, as it such a hybrid of conventional steam freight car and interurban design.
In this age of plastic and resin, the use of colored card in a kit may seem “old-fashioned”, but card is a very versatile and convenient modelling medium, and where small production runs are called for, is ideal, as it offers versatility at low cost. To do a kit like this in plastic would put up the cost 20 fold or more because the massive tooling costs have to be recouped on a short production run. The kit consists of several sheets of pre-printed fully coloured card, along with detailed instructions and a photo of a completed model to refer to during construction. It includes the body sides, ends, floors, the complex monitor roof, and trucks. It can be built up as a simple “box” by a younger or less experienced modeller, or the multiple layers, including overlays for the strapping and hinges permits superb 3D effects. The card is quite thin, but this means that it bends smoothly but flooring and other structural areas should be reinforced with additional card that is readily available from stationers, or you can use a cornflake or similar packet if you are into recycling ! In assembling the bodies, a multi-layer sandwich is assembled adding strength, whilst separate add on details are included, although the beginner can omit these if he prefers as they are printed on the sides as well. Painting is often the biggest worry for modellers, and many fine models are let down by a mediocre paint job. Apart from being much easier to build that a brass or white metal kit, another benefit of our pre-printed card kits is that this daunting task is avoided as the model is pre-colored with full lettering, striping etc. In fact, the reason we did our very first “kit” was that we wanted a British tram with incredibly complex striping, and baulked at trying a paint job like that. With computer aided design, we could blow it up to 800% of final size and get it exactly right and then get it printed. The kit includes fold-up card trucks that are suitable for a static model.
Unlike expensive etched brass kits that many modellers find too daunting, and are not really suitable to the younger modeller, if you do get it wrong, it is many dollars that have been thrown away. If you do make a mess of it, you can put it down to experience and start again.
The display model is from one of our kits. Having had the “pleasure” of building other manufacturer’s kits that do NOT go together, we always make a “proving model” to make sure all is well. As well as being fair to buyers of our kits, we make kits of stock we want for our own layout, so we want one anyway ! For that reason, we have added a full set of handrails, and working trucks to our model, although being in the UK, we have not been able to obtain the correct and somewhat unusual trucks that the original cars were mounted on. They do not come with the kit, but show clearly that with a few inexpensive additions, the basic model can be an attractive addition to any layout.
The kit is numbered to build reefer No 1806, but the artwork includes a fully color drawing, and if you want a pair of reefers you can buy a second kit, and use the two color drawings from both kits in place of the ordinary sides to produce a second differently numbered car. Should you wish to obtain a pair of Illinois Traction reefers, contact us before paying, and we can arrange to add a second car to your order.
See also our North Shore line battery trolley locos and wooden interurban cars, CA&E box motor and interuebans and Manx Electric Railway interurban kits which may be of use to US traction fans as well
Given the reference to CARD and KIT in the item description and in the write up, it may seem un-necessary to say that this is NOT a ready-to-run die-cast metal model, but one e-bayer bought one of our kits and then complained that the description was “misleading”, for although it included the words CARD nine times and KIT, he thought it was a complete R-T-R metal model !!! He complained about “misleading” advertising, and returned the kit. We refunded his payment in full, even though the mistake was entirely his, so he very kindly trashed us with bad feedback. Happily most e-bayers are really nice and we have quite a few customers who have bought each of our MER or Glasgow kits as it has been released, and the kind comments really do matter, but sadly one incident like that does stick in your memory.