Nu Cast kits

[The Stationmaster]

The original Cotswold kits (which were later marketed by Nu-Cast and are now shown as part of the range we are looking at) also had a solid milled brass chassis block although I believe the recommended motor varied. The ex-Westward 54XX kit - also shown in there, they were originally taken over by Cotswold I think before going to Nu-Cast - came with cast white metal frames which had brass bearings pre-inserted, but that didn't overcome uneven shrinkage of the castings.

 

So I suppose the question for this present range is do they now have a consistent design of chassis whatever the kit's original parentage?

[Conory]

When the K's/Nucast range was taken over by Autocom rumour had it that they were working through the range and developing etched chassis in nickel silver. If these redesigned chassis could have been sold separately then many a poor running kit could have been rescued.

 

Perserverance used to provide nickel silver chassis for many of the K's models but they also seem to have disappeared. Perserverance items are still well regarded if the prices they command on ebay are anything to go by.

 

GEM appear to be overhauling their range and have introduced etched nickel silver chassis(chasses or chassises)at very reasonable prices. I'm half way through their Mansion House chassis to fit under an old body. I've also got a Precursor tank to build.

 

My interest is LNWR in OO and so I'm looking at GEM, London Road Models (although I'm a bit daunted at the thought of etched kits), Nucast for the Coal Tank, and DJH for a Claughton (unlikely), Falcon Brass (etched again), Dean Sidings (resin bodied Beames 0-8-4T), Millholme POW 4-6-2T.

 

The volume of sales for some kit models must be miniscule these days.

 

Julian

[Kenton]

The volume of sales for some kit models must be miniscule these days.

That is partially due to the "time stood still" approach that kit suppliers (some not all) have taken with their kit designs.

 

Most (if not all) of these kits were designed when steam locomotives were still running on mainlines or in recent living memory, they were designed with the technology of the day (pen, paper and slide rule) and with the materials available and limited by the technology. The "kits" (difficult to describe some of them as such) were a massive step forward in their day from the art of the scratch build and opened up the possibility for many modelers to build a loco that actually looked pretty close to the prototype (even if getting them to run well required an engineering miracle.

 

I think there are still plenty of modelers who get pleasure out of building their own models but these days I think the majority of them would prefer a well designed and better detailed kit. Some of these NuCast kits were great for their time but these days ... I'm not so sure, especially without investment to improve them.

[hayfield]

2 companies are brining thier old cast kits in to the 21st century, Southeastern Finecast and GEM (there may be others).

 

I go along with coachman in that I preffer all cast body is better than an all etched body but the best is a combination of both, using cast where that is best and etched brass/nicklesilver where that most suits the needs.

 

All etched (sheet metal) locos with super detail are outstanding, but there is something about the weight of cast locos that feels right to me.

 

I have a Precurser Tank by GEM to build, the castings are nice and crisp and the 3 part etched chassis looks a work of art. I also have a Wills Flatiron to rebuild, looking at the SEF parts list they now offer body etchings as well as extra details including cab detail and an etched chassis. So these 2 companies have brought some of their range up to date.

 

Sorry for the plug but I am a satisfied customer of both.

 

Now back to fitting wheels motor and gears to a Wills cast chassis for the 1854 pannier tank, I have a soft spot for building these as intended.

[Horsetan]

When the K's/Nucast range was taken over by Autocom rumour had it that they were working through the range and developing etched chassis in nickel silver. If these redesigned chassis could have been sold separately then many a poor running kit could have been rescued.

 

Not just a rumour. Autocom did start to make new etched chassis available, but they had brass frames, and were done to DJH thicknesses (36thou thick), according to the list Autocom sent me at the time.

 

Perseverance used to provide nickel silver chassis for many of the K's models but they also seem to have disappeared. Perserverance items are still well regarded if the prices they command on ebay are anything to go by.

 

All brass. Never seen Perseverance chassis rendered in n/s. Technically still in existence, but all but dead in reality now as Chris Parrish seems unlikely to produce any more. Some of the later chassis kits were just plain wrong in shape, e.g. the Ivatt 2-6-0/2-6-2T, or unbuildable as designed, e.g. the Bulleid Light Pacific (yes, I tried. Oh God I tried).

 

Superseded by Comet Models anyway, so no real loss now.

 

The beauty of whitemetal kits was they took the hardwork out of shaping parts. A skilled patter maker had done the donkey work....

 

This is true, but then you had to be happy with the resultant moulds and quality control. Some otherwise promising kits are spoilt by oval smokeboxes and boilers. Or the two-part footplate, where one side is longer than the other side.

[Jol Wilkinson]

I can't agree that WM kits are in any way preferable to etched kits, other than they have ballast already built in. One of the disadvantages of casting large lumps of whitemetal is that few, if any, manufacturers could produce a boiler that when assembled was round and didn't have noticeable joins. Large pieces of w/m shrink and distort in often unpredictable ways during the casting process. Its no coincidence that the better etched kit manufacturers have largely changed from cast whitemetal fittings to lost wax brass components over the years.

 

It's also an unsuitable material to represent thin sheet components such as footplates, cab sides, roofs, etc. Moulds deteriorate with use and unless the producer is willing to invest in new ones, the quality of the components in a kit deteriorate. That doesn't happen with photo etch tools.

 

I struggled to make anything decent out of the GEM or K's LNWR and Midland kits (albeit over twenty years ago and my model making skill have possibly got a little better since then). When I bought my first etched kit, a Proscale LNWR Coal Tank I found I could make something much better. Mind you the Proscale kit wasn't faultless, but it still runs on London Road, albeit now with a new chassis with AG milled frames, etc.

 

To those who feel that etched kits are too difficult compared to whitemetal I can only quote Dickens, "Bah, humbug!" A well designed kit, and most of them are, will go together readily and it won't need filler and a lot of filing. You can't melt brass or n/s with a soldering iron and the finished result will be "crisper". To me, models from wm kits, unless very well built and finished often have a heavy, lumpy look about them.

 

Jol

[Penlan]

It's not only the mould making, although I agree that is the major factor with WM, but also the composition of the WM.

 

Many years ago I had some WM LNWR 7mm radial coach spring castings from the late Lesley Good, which I believe were Rocket Precision castings,

these were far superior to the WM in K's kits etc., but were still termed 'White Metal'.

[hayfield]

There are lots of good reasons for using etched metal for loco kits, however they are more difficult to build.

 

The castings I have in the 'new updated' GEM kit I recently brought are far superior than those in some second hand original kits as are the Southeastern Finecast. I guess that also goes for many other modern kits.

 

Compairing a K's kit with a modern etched kit is as good as comparing a Jedinco kit of the 70's with a modern GEM kit. However many have made quite respectable models from the early 60'/ 70's kits

 

Like all things, if you preffer one mode over another the chances are a better model will be made.

 

Again I far preffer a composite kit where you have the best of both worlds

[Jol Wilkinson]

There are lots of good reasons for using etched metal for loco kits, however they are more difficult to build.

 

The castings I have in the 'new updated' GEM kit I recently brought are far superior than those in some second hand original kits as are the Southeastern Finecast. I guess that also goes for many other modern kits.

 

Compairing a K's kit with a modern etched kit is as good as comparing a Jedinco kit of the 70's with a modern GEM kit. However many have made quite respectable models from the early 60'/ 70's kits

 

Like all things, if you preffer one mode over another the chances are a better model will be made.

 

Again I far preffer a composite kit where you have the best of both worlds

 

The last wm loco that I built was of the same "generation" as several etched kits I have built and I still believe that an etched kit is a better medium for most of the protoypes we are modelling. An etched kit is accepted as the preferred approach to carriages, so why would relatively large cast lumps of a soft metal be better as a material for a loco?

 

It would be better to compare the current Gem or SEF with say a London Road Models kit than make the comparisons you have given. I agree that you are more likely to achieve a satisfactory result with a modelling material that you are comfortable with, but it doesn't always mean it's the best for the job.

 

Use of different materials in kits is the norm and provided they are well chosen and produced for the relevant parts then its a very good approach. The use of resin castings for large parts that aren't easy to cast accurately or for items that might be difficuly to fabricate is a technique that has been used by some, including Martin Finney, London Road Models and BrassMasters.

 

Sometimes its commercial or technical constraints (or laziness by the kit designer/producer) that decides the choice of material. We have seen etched items that should be cast and vice versa. We see the use of whitemetal for items that would be better in cast brass or nickel silver or even etched. Etch technology was in it's infancy when many of the cast kits we see on the market were first produced. When etching became viable, some poor designs were produced. I think it's a lot different today and a good etched kit will produce a better model than a good wm kit, but that's not to say a bad etched kit is any better than a bad wm kit.

 

Jol

[Kenton]

Whitemetal suits boilers because this is one area modellers stuggle with when confronted with a flat etch that has to be rolled.

No I have to disagree, that is muddling what is "best" for representing the prototype and what is "best" for the novice or inexperienced modeler who has not learned a technique or does not have the correct tool for the job.

 

Etched boilers every time IMO - especially as there is now little excuse for the kit designer in not* producing boiler etches that will actually roll to the correct size.

 

Whitemetal should be confined to the items that cannot be cast (too expensive) in lost wax.

 

* Thanks to Industrial for understanding the intended meaning even though a certain 3-letter word was missing. Important though

[Horsetan]

I look at the Weinert German loco kits, which only use whitemetal (but still cast to a very high order) for major components - everything else is cast brass or etched. That's probably why they cost £500.....

[industrial]

Etched boilers every time IMO - especially as there is now little excuse for the kit designer in producing boilers etches that will actually roll to the correct size.

 

I think you have missed the word not out.

[John_Hughes]

I must admit that some of the old WM kits were pretty ghastly, especially in the chassis department; did anyone ever get one of the original K's 14XX tanks to run really nicely, with that awful cast chassis? (I remember one K's ad when the winner of a competition to build the best 14XX was announced, and he allegedly claimed that his was 'a particularly fine runner,' which sounds very unlikely indeed!)

 

But despite that it's possible to get some very nice results indeed from WM kits if you know what you're doing and are prepared to take the time and to make the necessary modifications; Iain Rice's book on Whitemetal Locos has pictures of some real corkers, and that alone ought to demonstrate just what can be done with a decent kit in the right hands. And there are some nice ones on display on RMWeb, too!

 

Some etched kits are, frankly, grim too; some of what I've had to put up with from Falcon - to mention just one - would drive many inexperienced modellers to conclude that they just lacked the skills needed, whereas in reality it's the kit that's not up to scratch rather than the modeller. Or the old Mallard GWR Railmotor that I struggled with for ages, and which finally produced a really smashing little model, once I'd invented a way to fix the roof, a way to mount the power bogie, a way to fasten the floor to the body, a way to model the truss-rods, a way to make and mount the under-floor water-tank, a way to make the coal-bunker, a way to make the boiler..... You get the point!

 

In the end a lot of it simply comes down to two factors: the quality of the kit production - whatever the medium - and the skill and determination of the modeller. If both are reasonably good, then some fine results can be obtained in almost any modelling medium.

[Metropolitan]

Here's an exploded diagram of the Nu-Cast (Autocom) T14 I bought from Sherwood Models a couple of years ago:

 

 

 

 

Chassis is fairly crude a la DJH but does the job. Whether all the Nu-Cast kits are to a similar design I know not. The kit is produce on the basis that if it can be cast in whitemetal it is cast in whitemetal! Thus you receive the usual horrors of whitemetal slidebars and crossheads, vacuum pipes and all fittings etc.

 

I was wrong above; the kit came with a nice wheelset by Markits to RP25 profile hence the price.

 

I had a hell of a fight when building it especially with the whitemetal slidebars and crossheads. In hindsight it would have been better to substitute these.

 

 

Still, at least they are still being produced!!! Hat's off to the guy as I am sure it must be a labour of love! Think I'll order another Nu-Cast kit now this thread has reminded me of them.......

 

 

 

 

[Skaran]

The GWR Flower 4-4-0 I am building came with a similar brass chassis for the loco but has a white metal one under the tender. It also appeared to have an oval section white metal boiler which after much filing is now more or less circular.

 

I have found with NuCast kits that they very enormously from loco to loco. I also have a388 Armstrong Goods which is going together very well, though again a white metal chassis for the tender.

[hayfield]

As Coachman says in the 60s/70's cast kits were all that we had till the likes of Mallard and Jedinco etc came on the market.

 

K's were the entry level all in one kits, in 1967 the J72 was just under a fiver (a weeks wages when I just started work)a Wills saddle tank was £3 but you needed wheels motor and gears or the 94xx was just over £2 and a Triang chassis just over £4, so the K's kits were the easy option as complete kits and cheaper. And as said better that the RTR offerings.

 

I have rebuilt many different makes of loco kits, Wills, GEM and DJH are at the better end, but even sone of these used split pins as hand rail knobs.

 

There are many good (they are 60s/70s models) K's kits out there, like other kits they can be improved by replacing and or adding better quality cast and turned items (like all models) I have a K's 14xx running fine on a K's chassis. Also a GNR Atlantic with a HMP2 motor is very spritely, all the newer D wheels have been replaced with Romfords. I even have converted a 14xx and 57xx K's locos to EM by packing out the side frames with plasticard, they are not up to modern etched chassis with can motors and gear boxes, but then they use 40 year old technology.

 

Even today many modellers preffer to build in whitemetal as its easier, also like Hornby Dublo locos were to Triang some of us preffer the weight these models have. I accept that etched brass in many cases is technically the better material to use and gives a more accurate model when building a loco, but if you do not like using it or cannot solder it then its not the best for you.

 

I have a few etched brass locos and also a few Jamieson locos, the former being super detailed models but the feeling of weight when you pick up a whitemetal seems to convey something of the original that brass sheet does not.

 

There is room enough in the hobby for both camps and those who preffer the highly detailed plastic models that are available today.

[bertiedog]

Most white metal kits were quite simply as good as the work put in to the assembly, just the same as with an etched kit. The parts may be more accurate with brass, but it all depends on the builder.

 

Split pin knobs may seem odd, but with half round brass wire you can make custom knobs to any height, quite as good as turned ones, once a washer base is added and soldered up it may even be better than turned, easier to get scale sized heads with the hole in the centre!

 

Once a cast kit has acceptable parts, corrections and added details it is about as good as it gets. Brakes, springing etc., could be added, and where to better class models.

 

Many K's I built for customers had inside valve gear, fully detailed brakes, all piping in copper, brass domes and chimneys, brass boiler bands and clasps, fully sprung buffers, fully fitted backheads with glass sight glasses, pressure gauges with scales etc, none of this in any way depended on whether it was scratch built, cast kit, or etched, or what make the model kit was from.

 

Drive systems were to suit the uses, often I fitted motors in tenders with drive shafts to the chassis, with the solid boiler traction was never a problem!! Any cast kit was not an Airfix kit, it was a set of engineering parts to make a loco, and would always need extras added over the basics supplied.

 

The biggest problem in the late 60's and 70's was lack of decent wheels and accurate gears, most were simply awful, apart from Romford wheels, but they suffered from very odd appearance.

 

Nu-cast could be bad, very bad, on casting standards, oval parts, tapered parts etc, due to miss placed casting positions in the moulding machines. But all correctable within reason, although the LNER Atlantic was a challenge.

 

K's castings were in general accurate and with care you could match the best scratchbuilt work, with the added weight advantage as well. Cost cutting was the problem with the other parts, and lack of consistency in supply.

 

Brass etched kits still suffer from lack of brass turned and formed parts, the tendency has been to use whitemetal instead of lost wax brass parts. A white metal kit detailed in brass is actually a better proposition than an etched kit with white metal parts added. Fine detail should be in brass or nickel not soft lead alloy.

 

Stephen.

[industrial]

 

K's castings were in general accurate and with care you could match the best scratchbuilt work, with the added weight advantage as well. Cost cutting was the problem with the other parts, and lack of consistency in supply.

 

Stephen.

 

What I have heard at times K's were tight for money at times so added more roofing lead to the mix to keep the cost down so this is part of the reason some of them were better than others.

 

The biggest advantage with the production of white metal kits if you have a bad cast you can open the lid and re-melt it again. This is inpossable with etched brass and in plastic you can use up to 10% in a mix and it also still can cause you problems when doing it.

[JeremyC]

I remember when Nucast Kits first appeared they were regarded as very good kits, I still have a V2, K2 and 02 [don't know why I bought the 02, they never ran in Scotland]. One reason for their popularity among the members of the club I was [and still am] in was they were of LNER prototypes at a time when everything seemed to be GWR.

 

As has been said the quality of the kit depends on the standard of the pattern making / draughtmanship, not whether the kit is whitemetal or etched brass. The best kit I've ever built was a Weinert HOe 'Spreewald', all whitemetal and it came with the chassis part built and ready to run [probably why it cost over 200GBP for a model about 50mm long!], a lovely kit and a good runner; the worst was a RJH [does anybody remember them?] 'O' gauge class 37 built for a friend, etched brass with lead castings, awful, but I did mange to get it built and it's still trundling around his layout.

 

For steam models my preference is etched brass, but with a well cast WM boiler for simplicity and weight. I've just finished a PDK A2/1 which has a cast resin boiler, nice clean casting, but big problems getting somewhere to put enough weight so it can pull a decent train, I suppose an etched boiler would have at least had room for weights.

 

I see nothing wrong with WM fittings, a good WM fitting's better than a poor lost wax one [a proscale P2 comes to mind ]. Like coachman I find having to laminate up x layers to produce something that would have been better cast very tiresom.

 

The high cost of these kits [and of Markits wheels] has been mentioned, I rather suspect this is because with so few of us kit building the production costs have to be recovered on very low sales volumes.

 

Jeremy

[bertiedog]

Possibly the biggest cause of increases in prices is the rise in cost of whitemetal and brass over the past three years or so. I still feel the time is ripe for a return to easy-to-build bodyline loco kits......For instance, MR 2F and 4F loco bodies to go on new Bachmann 3F chassis, and even a slightly stretched LYR '3F 0-6-0!!! I'll duck before the purists read this latter remark and wonder if coachmann has finally lost it...

 

One problem is the period that the Chinese makers leave the chassis in production without modification, and the lack of "chassis alone" on some models.

Tri-ang and Hornby left things unmodified for decades, or the changes were so minor you could risk the production of a kit, but Kader and other FE makers alter things even during a production run. A simple change to a mounting hole and the kit is thrown out, and quite frankly the modern plastic chassis's simply could not take the weight of a white metal body on the plastic bearings.

 

Stephen.

[hayfield]

One problem is the period that the Chinese makers leave the chassis in production without modification, and the lack of "chassis alone" on some models.

Tri-ang and Hornby left things unmodified for decades, or the changes were so minor you could risk the production of a kit, but Kader and other FE makers alter things even during a production run. A simple change to a mounting hole and the kit is thrown out, and quite frankly the modern plastic chassis's simply could not take the weight of a white metal body on the plastic bearings.

 

Stephen.

 

Certainly with Wills you had to modify the Triang chassis, so a slight modification by the maker may not be too much of a problem. With modern day chassis being build differently, would they lend themselves to the type of hacking about that the Triang ones would stand. Availability should be no problem as there is a large secondhand market in RTR locos.

[Jol Wilkinson]

 

Brass etched kits still suffer from lack of brass turned and formed parts, the tendency has been to use whitemetal instead of lost wax brass parts. A white metal kit detailed in brass is actually a better proposition than an etched kit with white metal parts added. Fine detail should be in brass or nickel not soft lead alloy.

 

Stephen.

 

Stephen,

 

I think that's an inaccurate generalisation these days. In my experience the better kit manufacturers have increasingly used lost wax brass components. Some kits introduced over twenty years ago have been updated with brass, rather than w/m fittings. White metal castings tend to be used only where the casting can be easily cleaned up or where mould parting lines are hidden.

 

I've just finished designing two etched locos and two etched tenders for a kit manufacturer. The locos have between 16 or 22 brass castings (plus turned parts) and only 1 or 2 cast w/m parts. The tenders have 8 brass and 2 -3 w/m castings. While more w/m would have been cheaper, the results wouldn't be so good.

 

There is no doubt that so called "composite" kits provide the best answer if the materials are correctly selected for the various components. However, economic constraints play a part. Sales volumes of kits are relatively small and committing to a volume of 60 or 70 for a large resin component, at up to £15 each (to get worthwhile quality) requires an investment that can be difficult to justify for a small volume producer.

 

The advantage of etching is that, once the artwork and tooling is produced, very low production volumes can be ordered. The same applies to castings, especially whitemetal.

 

Jol

[JeremyC]

One problem is the period that the Chinese makers leave the chassis in production without modification, and the lack of "chassis alone" on some models.

Tri-ang and Hornby left things unmodified for decades, or the changes were so minor you could risk the production of a kit, but Kader and other FE makers alter things even during a production run. A simple change to a mounting hole and the kit is thrown out, and quite frankly the modern plastic chassis's simply could not take the weight of a white metal body on the plastic bearings.

 

Stephen.

 

 

A prime example of where the disappearance of a chassis had a devastating effect was in 009. There the Ibertren 'Cuckoo' 0-4-0 chassis was a popular choice for many body-line kits and when that went out of production whole ranges were effectively rendered obsolete.

 

Jeremy

[Metropolitan]

Most of this thread misses the point. The fact is that those of us who still build 4mm loco kits do it because they enjoy it. A good kit, to me, is one that I have enjoyed building be it whitemetal, brass, or kryptonite. Good instructions are 50% of the joy!

[John_Hughes]

Most of this thread misses the point. The fact is that those of us who still build 4mm loco kits do it because they enjoy it. A good kit, to me, is one that I have enjoyed building be it whitemetal, brass, or kryptonite. Good instructions are 50% of the joy!

 

I think that hits the mark almost exactly (apart from when someone pays me to build a kit, and I just have to hope and pray that it's actually buildable!)

 

The Iain Rice philosophy - that one should 'build a model of such-and-such a locomotive using a Bloggs kit' rather than 'build a Bloggs kit of such-and-such a locomotive - seems to me to be spot on too.