Unboxing and stage 1

Entry posted by 508EMU November 23, 2019

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Recently I have been keeping an eye on the rather tasty looking PEP series 3d printed kits on ebay, over time I have watched the quality improve throughout the listings, and following a topic on this forum where a class 313 from this range was built , I decided to take the plunge and do a 508.

The kits are available by 'Modernmultipleunits2019' on ebay - give it a search!

First to note is the product came very well packaged which is always a good start. Each bodyshell comes in 3 sections (end, middle, end) - it is a 3 coach train so 9 body pieces in total. Also included are bogie sideframes and the bodyfloors complete with predrilled holes for bogie mounting and a bigger removable chunk on the centre coach for a motor bogie (designed to work with the newer Hornby 153/6 bogies and motors).

I had a go at assembling the body shells last night. First thing to note is a bit of sanding and fiddling is involed to get them to fit - of course there are some rough edges from the printing process which need smoothing down. I also found the roof mounted glueing strips are too big and push the roof up too high in some cases, however I believe the 2 middle sections for my motor coaches wern't HD prints, whereas the trailer coach was which fit like a dream. I decided to completely remove this roof support anyway. According to the seller if I have understood the description correctly, it will soon be availabe as whole solid bodyshells which dont come in 3 parts.

Obviously its not a perfect fit, filler is needed to make the joins seemless but overall so far I am impressed. In some cases the base of the bodypart were different widths, so a quick measure of the chassis/floor width and cutting some strong card to size helped stretch them out to the correct width to fit. My progress so far is posted here. I am going to invest in some filler this afternoon and will post my results in due course.

I havnt bought the etched window frames or undercarriage components yet as the mrs would probably have a fit, so it will be a slow build from start to finish and also my first attempt at a kit built. Hopefully this will help people understand what the kit is like and help influence a decision.