Hamfisted Welsh Fat Boy with chubby fingers...

[The Johnster]

There was a time, long, long, ago but in a galaxy not very far away at all. there was a railway modeller.  He wasn't a particularly good railway modeller, but he could make a fair fist of, say, a Ratio signalbox. He even build a whitemetal Westward 64xx with a nickel silver fold up chassis that he was very proud of, and thought he was the bees knees... Then he grew old, and fat, and feeble, and his eyesight wasn't as good, and his hands shook a bit sometimes, and when he built another Ratio signalbox a couple of months ago, it took him ages and he had a bit of a struggle with the windows, but he got it finished in the end, not to any degree of perfection but to a thing he could live with until something better came along.  

 

Enough, he said to himself, because even had there been anyone there nobody ever listens to him, no more Ratio, they're too hard for me these days.  But Ratio make some good stuff, so he couldn't keep that up for long and soon he was in Antics buying a set of swan necked lamps, which come in the form of a kit and have to be assembled any painted by himself.  After all, it's a lamp, you stick one bit on top of the other one starting at the base and working your way up, how hard can it be, he reasoned, forgetting in his enthusiasm that reasoning is not his strong point...

 

This afternoon, he had a go at building them.  I (for in truth it was me all along) started off by breaking the first swan neck in half trying to cut it off the sprue; these little so and sos are ridiculously fragile and brittle, though I 'spose mine might have been in the shop a while and degraded a bit.  Realising that extra care was needed and that I was now down to 8 out of 9 lamps, I made a point of cutting them off the sprue with extreme care, only to break another 3 just handling them, one by dropping it to the carpeted floor and another trying to persuade it to locate in the hole in the collar on top of the post. The third casualty, so far as I am aware, was broken on the sprue, but whether by me or not I cannot say.  I am aware that Ratio do not go into great detail on their intsructions, and are almost as bad as IKEA, but a warning about how to handle these and a more positive hole for them to locate into, might help as even the tiniest force does for them!

 

I've now retreated to the keyboard to have a cuppa and a moan about it to make me feel better, but 5 lamps took me an hour and half to do and they are now glue drying sort of hanging off the bench to try and get them to go off in a reasonably upright and square configuration, but there will be no more delicate work today; my hands are shot to pieces and shaking like an Arab at US immigration, not to mention that my eyes are not coming out to play any more for close work today!  And of course I still have to paint them and stick the 'bulbs' on!  If they are this delicate, I am wondering how long they will survive my general hamfistedness on the the layout.

 

I am beginning to question the value of kits if this is going to happen a lot.  The point of a kit, in my view, is that it is a method by which a small manufacturer can provide a relatively niche item at a low cost, the purchaser doing the actual assembly and finishing.  I have heard the argument that a closer to scale model can be achieved with a more detailed and hence 'difficult' kit, as if difficulty is related to the number of parts, but I have to say I think these swan necks, not the most obscure of items and there must be many thousands on layouts, are unreasonably difficult.  Surely it would not add to the production costs significantly to mould the necks as one piece with the collars, which would make attachment to the post much easier and stronger; that way I might have 8 lamps drying in the layout room instead of 5.  I enjoy as much as the next man the satisfaction of making things myself, but do not feel that a challenge for the sake of it is worth my time, money, and effort.  Sorry, Ratio, you've lost a customer, except if I ever need any more signals.

 

I'm turning into a box opener in my dotage...