As folk want some experience and comments of these kits, so I might as well add mine.
I acquired two of these kits before xmas as I knew there would be a need for something to do after it while either a lock-down or terrible weather, or both (as it has become) during the time that little else could be done.
First of all, I would argue that these are easy for beginners to build. There's no upper superstructure to do of course, and the resin cast is excellent. But once you get into the chassis, it's quite difficult. Fortunately I have built similar ones so it wasn't all head-scratching for my first attempt.
The W's are ready cut and are part of the steel wheel supports all in one piece. The two units (one for one each end of course) are nice and neat and press into a space each under the body (GRS says glue them in), but you have to work out which way round they fit - in theory you could have 3 different wheel-bases! You have to work out how to get 9'.
I decided to open up the holes noted in the steel and fix them with 6BA nuts and short bolts in case I ever need to remove them, or worry about them parting from the body. The axle boxes slide in nicely with a bit of grease. The pin under the dummy leaf springs has to be cut to a suitable length and small (no, tiny) coil springs have to be fitted (if you get that far (their usual destination is on the carpet followed by a grovel to find them again). The springs anyway, are almost useless as the amount of spring is so small they don't lift the body.
Fitting the axle-boxes keepers provides some experience with what GRS call rivets. These are tiny (No, almost invisible (especially on the floor!) and are of two sizes. The larger ones don't fit the holes in the keepers, but as you find later, they don't fit the brake gear either, leaving you without enough to do all the places. Trying to drill the tiny holes to a bit larger is hard (try to use sub-1mm modelling drills on steel - they will often burn themselves out). You can, of course, spend a few evenings with a small round file to get the right size where you need them.
But why, oh why didn't GRS make the holes and 'rivets' fit properly? They had to drill/laser-cut the holes anyway. On top of this problem, brake blocks have 3 holes which are designed to take rivets through to the laser-cut steel. Yes, there were 3 holes but they are not the same spacing as the blocks so the rivets won't go through (and the hole size was again wrong in the steel). I gave up trying to get the larger rivets through and made do with one smaller rivet through one hole and plenty of cyano to hold it all together. Again I didn't think there would be much force on this area.
On the good side, the cut steel pieces fit very well into the cast space arranged so that the resin brake blocks are about in the right place. A bit of adjusting with pliers or filing of the resin block is sometimes necessary. They then are glued under the body. I did consider nuts and bolts again, but decided that the brake frame wouldn't take any force so would be OK with glue.
Once fitting, you can glue or solder them.
The buffers supplied are Slaters sprung and are very nice. I'll be using them for future builds I think.
The draw hooks are as usual, but not sprung either each one or a spring from one end to the other. Instead they supply a brass rod with instructions to shape a hook at the back of each hook. So the hooks will move in and out depending what pushes and pulls at any end.
That's about that.
Just to say that the first truck was a lot of fiddling about and it took about a fortnight to finish (amongst other house jobs!), but the experience of the first one was very useful and I did the second one in less than a week.
I've still do the painting and weathering, and cut some polystyrene blocks to support a false floor covered with coal, but that's it! I hope it helps anyone who is starting with this sort of truck.
Bruce
