I'm pleased to announce both pre-production models of CN 878000 and 879000 series are now painted, lettered and dullcoted. It was a marathon to complete them during the last few weeks including a last minute reprinting of custom decals, but it is done.
I'm quite pleased with the finished result even thought assembly and sanding was a little bit sloppy on my part. Several points will need to be addressed, but overall, the end result is quite close to what I hope to put on the market.
At this point, you must wonder why I share no picture. Simply because the models will be officially unveiled in Toronto next Saturday at the invitation of fellow modeller Hunter Hughson. It will be a good occasion to get feedback from a few well-known modellers before moving forward into production.
As for the next steps, I'm slowly but steadily working on a second set of models with improvement. Minor changes include thickening the floor and sides from 1mm to 1.2mm to limit warping, improving the locating tabs, adding locating pins on detail parts such as ladders and finding a way to provide easy to install brake rod and chain.
Many questions still need answers at this point, particularly due to production constrains. I hope to find some of them during the weekend. Building the pre-production models changed my perspective on many things, including how the assembly process should be streamlined to ensure most modellers can build these cars in a reasonable amount of time.
Saty tuned!
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