Model Forum / General / Railroads / July 2008

Mrs W gor bless her little cotton socks bought me some casting gear for
Xmas, when not actually ripping up track and re laying it (and repeat)
and building scenery I've been making rolling stock and figures. 009
wagons are dead easy to make even without a casting machine you can get
good results. Tipplers, flats, wagons and soon to come bogie stock as
well ... just need something to pull them now ;-)

On 02/07/2008 16:40, Martin said,

Well worth the money - in fact it's well worth a lot more money.

Guess what I would suggest? :-) So long as you have previous experience
of etched brass kit-building...  Their kits I have experience of really
do go together extremely well.  If you have to file something to fit,
you've done something wrong.  The only possible stumbling block is the
small size of the things.

You might want to have a browse through the model rail section of my
website where you'll see a few examples of Backwoods kits in build so
you can get a better idea of what the kits will be like generally.  I
don't model 009 though :-)

While I'm sure the Backwoods kits build into beautiful models and
several people here clearly don't like white metal kits, I find the
Chivers Finelines kits quick and easy to build and quite appropriate
as a first venture into 009 for the less experienced. Steer clear of
anything four-coupled because the chassis are either too hard to find,
too hard to get running acceptably or both, but there are several six-
coupled types that are good starter kits. The Russell kit (which you
said was your favourite loco) goes together perfectly acceptably, and
captures the look of the prototype despite some compromises made to
accommodate the chassis. If you're not too concerned with the fact
that the valve gear is wrong, the drive's to the wrong axle and the
frames are inside, it fits very nicely on the Dapol 45xx chassis with
no modifications, and will give you a relatively cheap starter loco
that runs nicely. Once you've got that going to test the layout, then
maybe it's time to try something more complicated (and authentic
looking).

For more info from those with more experience, I suggest you join the
Narrow Gauge Railway Modelling Online forum at http://ngrm-online.com/
where you'll find lots of active discussion on all things 009 related.

Dave