Ratio 513 Provender Goods Store

[Tim Dubya]

Evening guys,  just contemplating starting the ratio provender store I've been scared of for the last couple of years.  I've heard from various sources that the kit is a bit a dog to assemble and I'm looking for any advice regarding the pitfalls with it. The steps are definitely going in the spares box, possibly along with the rainwater goods (I have a stash of Modelu components for these) and I will replace the floor with something more substantial out of styrene.

 

Cheers Dubs

[Bernard Lamb]

It is quite straightforward, providing you do a dry run and identify all the parts. Otherwise you will end up with not enough of some of them and too many of others. If you do find yourself in that situation, it is fairly simple to make them from plastic sections. In fact it might be quicker to just built it, in the knowledge that you will have to scratch build a few items. It makes up into a nice kit. I found it to be rather too small and wish I had bought at least one more kit.

Bernard

[GMKAT7]

Good evening Tim,

 

I built or at least tried to, one of these kits last year.

 

Having juggled the various side pieces into something resembling the box illustration, I then tried to get it sitting straight on the legs. Ha, that was a wasted effort.

 

Finally, when it came to fitting the doors both sides they were too small for the gap.

So, I gave up and scrapped it.

 

Cheers, Nigel.

[Ben Alder]

Built one years ago as the basic kit, and remember struggling with it then. Some five years back did another, based on the Thurso one, using two kits, and was a frustrating experience, getting all the panel pieces in the right order and matching up. After it was done, I decided that it would have been better to scratchbuild the superstructure and use the kits as a source of parts such as the pillars and roof ridges. Certainly a prototype that could do with another look at as a kit as they were widely scattered  and of varying sizes. Here is mine after all that - the pillars were indeed another sore point and ended up being sunk into place to hide discrepancies. The LMS shed beside it was from  scratch and a lot easier...

[Tim Dubya]

Thanks guys, a case of suck it and see I guess 👍

Edited February 6 by Tim Dubya

[tractionman]

I plumped for one of these, good value for twenty quid

 

https://www.kernowmodelrailcentre.com/p/24480/44-004-Bachmann-Scenecraft-Provender-Store

[Tim Dubya]

3 minutes ago, tractionman said:

I plumped for one of these, good value for twenty quid

 

https://www.kernowmodelrailcentre.com/p/24480/44-004-Bachmann-Scenecraft-Provender-Store

 

Considering a kit is now something like £20, that's damn good value.  If all else fails it's certainly an option.

Thanks

[Ben Alder]

1 hour ago, tractionman said:

I plumped for one of these, good value for twenty quid

 

https://www.kernowmodelrailcentre.com/p/24480/44-004-Bachmann-Scenecraft-Provender-Store

I had one of those as an interim, and it it a good rendition of the provendor store if not too fussed about location, but for my purposes I had to to it the hard way...

[The Johnster]

I have to say I don't like Ratio kits, not that I'd refuse them if there isn't an alternative, as there is in this case in Scenecraft RTP form at a very reasonable price, actually competitive with the kit.  It is my contention that a kit is suited to one of two rather different purposes, a) a method of producing a model of a prototype that cannot be justified as an RTR item for various reasons.  Such a kit needs to be well designed and use quality material to be robust and easy to assemble square and true, and be built using a basic selection of tools on a kitchen table. b) a method of instructing the modeller in how the prototype item was designed and built.  Such a kit will be extremely realistic, and ideally contain as many individual component parts as the original, but may well present a high degree of challenge to the builder; that's the main point of it.  It'll probably need a much more extensive workshop of tools and facilities to even attempt.  Some wooden sailing ship kits are like this; you start with the keel, add the stem and stern posts, fit the ribs, then the decks, then the outer planking, then you step the masts, then you rig.  By this time you know quite a bit about how to build a wooden sailing ship, much more than you would after building an Airfix plastic HMS Victory.  For the purposes of this discussion I will confine my observations to a).

 

Type a) kits should, IMHO, be capable of successful construction by almost anyone, and plastic kit buildings from Dapol Kitmaster, Gaugemaster, Wills, and others by and large are, as are printed card and 3D kits.  Lasercut kits are usually considered to be scratch aids to produce an accurate building shell, with details not included but added after the shell is complete.  These are pretty achieveable, the main problem being keeping track of the pieces in the more complex buildings, otherwise they fall together when you shake the box.

 

Ratio does not fit this mould at all.  Made up successfully and finished carefully & sympathetically, they can look superb, but (and it's a big but), small details are often flimsy and fragile to the extent that handling them, never mind inserting them into location holes or ribs, is near impossible.  The problem with not being able to locate the legs on the Provender Store sounds typical (I've never built one), but another example is the Highley Signal box and it's derivates.  The window panels are next to impossible to extract from the sprue without breaking at least a few of them (and of course the kit contains the abslute minimum number of frames you need, so break one and you've spoiled the kit), then, even if you have managed to go through the heart-surgeon delicacy of getting them off the sprue and filing away the pip, how on earth are you supposed to mount them in the window reveals of the main box pieces, all level and square and out-of-line so that the window frames can slide behind each other, or at least look as though they can?  I can't do it, and I'm sometimes not completely hamfisted even on a bad day!

 

Another one, not a building admittedly, is the GW Toad brake van.  What is going on with those half-a-side body panels, and how is a square and true bodyshell, essential for good running, to be made with them.  It's just simply not a structurally sensible way to build a bodyshell.  The Dean 4-wheeled coaches feature plastic footboard brackets that break if you look hard at them, and are structurally incapable of holding the featherweight of the plastic footboards; they will disintegrate over a rough track join.  I use office staples and superglue with real wood footboards (Sainsbury's Cafe coffee stirrers) instead, but you can still be defeated by warping floors. 

 

Most of the issues I have found with Ratio kits have been caused by poor design and unsuitable materials, plus in recent years increasingly dodgy plastic compounds.  I'm not going to do it, but it would be an intersting exercise to build, say, a Ratio GW van and a Parkside GW van using only the parts in the kits to build each van, and investigate 1) which was the easier to contruct, quality of design, fit of parts, &c, 2) which was the more realistic, 3) which ran better on the layout (we'll assume identical 25g weighting) with regard to squareness and trueness of the chassis, 4) which was the more robust, 5) how many parts were broken during the assmbly or painting, 6) which had the better transfers. 7) which was the easier to paint (quality of plastic and surface of plastic issue), 8), which cost less, 9) which did you think was the best value for money and 10) which you preferred overall?

 

Parkside by an Irish mile, every time, even now the ranges are merged.

 

 

[Wheatley]

Admittedly its been 30 years since I built mine and I extended it using a second kit, but I don't remember any particular construction  issues with it other than making sure the walls were completely flat while the cement set. I braced them behind with bits of sprue but that was for robustness in handling rather than to make anything fit. Anything with eight legs is going to take a bit of fettling to sit level. 

 

I did break the canopy off quite quickly, the supports for that got replaced with brass strip at an early date. 

Edited February 7 by Wheatley

[philsandy]

Try building Ratio signals and getting them to work!  I did, eventually, but what a struggle.

[Captain Kernow]

There's a Ratio example on Bleakhouse Road. As far as I can recall, it's just a case of 'steady as she goes' and don't be tempted to glue too many components together all at once, let the glue cure thoroughly on each two or three bits you put together.

 

[Oldddudders]

3 hours ago, Captain Kernow said:

There's a Ratio example on Bleakhouse Road. As far as I can recall, it's just a case of 'steady as she goes' and don't be tempted to glue too many components together all at once, let the glue cure thoroughly on each two or three bits you put together.

 

Did you skip the legs, Tim, or are they just hidden here?

[Captain Kernow]

54 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Did you skip the legs, Tim, or are they just hidden here?

No, I didn't use the legs.

 

[Oldddudders]

31 minutes ago, Captain Kernow said:

No, I didn't use the legs.

 

Smart move, frankly....

[Tim Dubya]

34 minutes ago, Oldddudders said:

Smart move, frankly....

 

Yes, after studying the sprues and looking at the real things in the "Southern Nouveau" book, I've come to the same conclusion.

 

I'm looking at something like gapped brickwork (no idea what it's called but I've asked the question in another post on here).

 

 

Edited February 7 by Tim Dubya
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[Cwmtwrch]

The store were on legs to keep rodents out as their contents were usually all too attractive to rats and mice...