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Oh, wait. This is TRW. People complain about those too
Looks like these are out in the wild now. Several sites saying they are shipping orders.Anyone received theirs yet and set to give us a review, or at least some photos so we can see how Kato did on them?
A couple design choices that I believe would have kept them in the $20 range...1) Get a newer? better? Mimaki UV printer at the factory. The lettering is rough on these. Like real rough. 2) Reprogram a better flange profile in the swiss lathe. Pizza cutters? yikes.3) Leave off some parts entirely rather than mold them into the tank body. The brake detail underneath is a single pull down mold half. So you get a flat surface facing you everywhere the brake rods should have air between them and the tank body. It looks like a framed tank car. Slighlty less egregious is the molded in placards on the car ends. But same concept. Leave it off. The same folks that don't care that its molded in are the same folks that won't miss it if its not there. But the cars are hard to salvage for those that want to improve them.Car bodies are crisp, and one thing Kato did get right for overall appearance is that they continue to tool good, fine, straight railings. With no glue. That's something hard to find in the assembly of a BLMA or Athearn tank. If the railings are available cheap, and someone 3D prints better bodies... well maybe you can do a unit train up to standards.
A couple design choices that I believe would have kept them in the $20 range......Car bodies are crisp, and one thing Kato did get right for overall appearance is that they continue to tool good, fine, straight railings. With no glue. That's something hard to find in the assembly of a BLMA or Athearn tank. ...
I wrote a long commentary, but Mike’s summed it up perfectly. I’ll let the pictures do the talking.TLDR, they’re salvageable if you want a super modern tank, but given the time, money and work to bring them to even the same standard as almost any other N scale tank that's been released in the past 2 decades the value proposition isn’t nearly what it initially appears. Some very unfortunate design decisions by Kato make these far more difficult to bring to standard then they could've been. That said, there is lots to like about these too and I'm sure they'll be popular.Large lettering detail:Small lettering detail:AFIAK, these cars should have top reporting marks, but the models don't.I will say that this UV decoration looks horrible under macro shots, but doesn't look nearly as bad under typical layout conditions. But when compared to the typical standards on N scale lettering on current production models its far from up to par. As bad as it looks under close up, its the least of the problems these cars have.Comparison relative to a Kato coal porter truck. Note the extra pizza action. These cars don't have springy suspension (IMHO a good thing mind), so I guess they went with pizza cutters to compensate. The coal porter wheels are much closer to scale 36", but the tank wheels measure in at 32.5". They break down nicely though.... Screw on trucks, the rest presses together in with absolute precision. You can add weight easily enough, as they are quite light stock.BLMA re-truck/NP conversion vs stock, both cars with brake "detail" still there. This pretty much sums up the stock truck/wheelset/ride height issues. The stock trucks are basically unsalvageable on account of their width and according super long axles, nerveless the challenge of sorting the ride height easily. The stock trucks are very free rolling though.By far the biggest issue with these cars is this brake "detail". Its just SO wrong, and these cars would have been so much better if it was just not there....I used my belt sander and did a quick and dirty removal job. Its rough, but the idea wasn't to make it perfect, just get it gone quickly with little fuss. Since its largely hidden under the car, workmanship here doesn't need to be perfect. SO much better with nothing.... Stock car...Improved car....They of course need some proper brake detail added back, but the point here is nothing is much better. The good news is NP coupler conversions are trivial, assuming you're re-trucking. I needed to ream out the BLMA bolsters to go over the Kato posts, along with 2 red Kadee washers to get the height right. I did use not quite retail available SBM's, but a SBX would work fine too. A threw some wash on the platforms to spruce them up a bit.In this lighting the brake removal job looks much better; It doesn't have to be perfect for sure. They seem to generally capture the prototype proportions and general detail nicely, the tank taper looks right... So definitely not all bad by any means at all. But they could have been so much better if they just left off that brake detail.
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Topic: Teaser video from KatoUSA (Read 5570 times)
