I bought a Metal Earth Train model kit that includes a GP 38 locomotive , a coal hopper, a boxcar a gondola and a caboose, all made from etched stainless steel flat panels. This has been a hard one for me , mainly because I do not have a couple of things that would make this much easier, namely a magnifying,lighted bench top helper, and maybe another set of hands would be helpful too. Sometime today I am going to the hobby store to get one so the last 2 cars to be built will be easier.
Didn’t notice it said 14 and up, since I am 12 there is one problem I’m having!
there is the whole kit as of right now, Loco , boxcar and hopper done, the mess is the rest of the gondola, the trucks for it are done, and the nice panel is the caboose awaiting my cutting and bending and cussing!
The loco is just about 4.5" long over the couplers. Everything looks pretty to scale except the handrail, where the had to make them a bit thicker I should have started with something a little easier, like the boxcar, and would have better firgured out some of the parts assembly before trying the wildly hard loco.
some of the underside details are really really small
one of the hardest things to do was the axles, as they start out as a flat panel with 2 tabs on each end, you have to roll them into an axle shape so that the tabs will fit thru the truck assembly, I put some pics on facebook and someone said they uses a small screwdriver to toll them around, better late than never to learn something. If you look at the first boxcar picture the instructions show how to bend and add the underbelly brake parts to the bottom of the boxcar, then look at this picture to see how small they are
Coal hopper, it lives up to its name as it is hopping around on 7 wheels as I goofed up bending one and it broke off , so that will go on the back side where its not as noticable. this is fun and I am learning as I go, and I think it will help my skills as I try new things on the 1/29 size stuff