Re: Unbuilt kits


Tim O'Connor
 


A few resin kits have been outdone in plastic, but not many of them. A number have been done
with lower overall quality (e.g. omission of details) such as the Red Caboose PFE wood reefers
(when compared to the Sunshine kits). And resin kits often have variations not offered in plastic.

The first really big murder of a resin kit I remember was the Proto 2000 Greenville gondola. Just
the year before that Sunshine had released a model of the car, which was a hugely popular prototype
that existed in large numbers. I built one of the Sunshine gons and it was a better replica than the
plastic car, but the difference was mostly in the underframe and even Richard Hendrickson didn't
think modelers should bother to model normally invisible details. :-) The same thing happened to
Byron Rose's AAR 50 ton standard flat car. Also 'done in' by Proto 2000. :-D


On 3/27/2022 6:24 PM, mopacfirst wrote:

I too have a layout to build, but I have surveyed all my remaining painted and lettered plastic kits and I'm trying to get the last of them built.  That will probably happen this year.  At least, the ones that are fairly accurate.  Some of the remainder may go in the dunk tank if they're a body style I need, or they may go out.

Undec plastic kits, I'm hanging on to, or at least building those out more slowly, because I have several things in mind for those.  But we're not talking about more than a few dozen of those. 

Resin kits, I must have 20 of them in partially built state, but since they're getting harder to come by, I figure I'll probably work those down by the time I'm too bonkers to model any more.  I'm not sure how many I have, but two or three shelves full is a good description.  Some that are lower on my priority list might get eBayed at some point, but from the looks of what's been on eBay in Sunshine and Westerfield kits, everybody else who builds a serious collection for operation has done that too.  I'm amused by the kits I see there which, a year after they were announced by the original producer, were effectively superceded by plastic, even RTR, and I imagine that half of the ones that are out there are being offered by people who have absolutely no idea that their stuff is effectively worthless.

Ron Merrick

--
Tim O'Connor
Sterling, Massachusetts

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