MicroAce/Arii "Blue Train" range

[Welshbloke]

A few months ago I noticed this range of cheap 1/80 kits and decided to risk ordering an OHaNeFu 25 100. They offer a series of sleeping cars, a restaurant car and the KaNi to keep the lights on along with various EF65s and 66s. The kits look to be very old tooling, with the locos supplied with an oval of plastic track and spaces internally for AA batteries as a power source (but needing a motor).

 

They are somewhat primitive, and after a brief poke at the contents the kit went on top of the wardrobe until last week, when I decided to see what could be done with it. Which produced this:

 

It still needs wheels which are actually round, after which I'll fine tune the coupler heights and fit some Kadees in place of these Lifelike Proto castoffs. But I'm now more inclined to order a couple of OHaNe 25s and a KaNi 24 to go with it, as it turns out you can make an attractive wallet from the proverbial sow's ear even if a silk purse isn't feasible.

[Welshbloke]

As promised on the new deliveries thread,  I'm going to document the next build. This time it's the matching KaNi. First, the box contents and a shot of the bare roof moulding:

 

 

The build will start after I finish my previous kit and may well take a while, as I tend to do a bit and then stop. I will photograph the main phases and post them here though.

[Welshbloke]

First off, before you paint anything check the parts fit. I found one of the roof mounting posts was a millimetre too long so the roof wouldn't sit down flush with the sides. Easy to sort out but also easier to attack unpainted parts with a file. The OHaNeFu had a few problems such as moulding pips on the underframe which pushed the ballast weight up, thankfully this one doesn't suffer from that. Here's the painted and lettered body waiting for its coat of satin lacquer:

 

I find Tamiya dark blue aerosol gives a pretty good approximation of JNR/JR blue, the silver and red parts are hand painted. Give the tail board housing a coat of white before fitting the transfer, on this model the board doesn't completely fill the aperture so you'll end up with blue or silver at the edges. The OHaNeFu had the opposite problem of the board being slightly too large!

 

The transfers are identical for all the kits, so you get spare numbers you can splice and rearrange to avoid duplicates if you want more than one of each type of coach.

 

The roof is currently drying after a coat of Haze Grey from Tamiya, after which it'll get a second pass on the other side and be left to harden fully before the lacquer treatment. Next post will be a kit of painted parts and assembly.

 

[Welshbloke]

Got a bit carried away and skipped the parts photo:

 

 

This one is held together purely by friction and the two big screws which go up through the bogie pivots. Kadee #5s screw to the original coupler mounts and are a lot less obtrusive than those tension lock style things the coaches come with, although closer coupling between them would help. There's a slight problem with the KaNi going into tight curves on two wheels as the OHaNeFu tries to pull it over, but I'll figure it out eventually.

 

Incidentally, with the passenger carrying stock I'd advise gluing the windows in to reinforce the body. I used Deluxe Materials Glue 'n' Glaze and a good number of clothes pegs to hold the parts together until it dried. I may yet go back and do that with the KaNi, but it seems ok at the moment.