The DA freight car ladders - very fine parts - are also
extremely prone to breakage. I never knew it was just
crummy (crumbly?) plastic. But since the problem never seems to
happen with Kadee ladders, I now see the
wisdom of this explanation.
Kadee does recycle sprues etc. into virgin styrene, but only ONCE. The excess from THAT batch is all scrapped. Then excess from the following virgin batch can be recycled once, and so on. Any other process degrades the styrene.
