on the receiver. This was a simple and painless process. Whether the kingpin is too big or the hole in the receiver is too small, I will never know. What I do know is that these trailers look incredi- bly cool on one of these flat cars. The im- mediate future should yield flat cars from Trainworx as well as BLMA. This trailer is something that N
scale modelers have been requesting for years. Until now, there was nothing on the market even remotely close to this type of trailer. Trainworx has an- swered the call and done so in fine style. Seeing these only makes me wonder what can we expect to see next. Based on this model, it can only be good things. The Trainworx 40-foot, drop frame trailer sells for $15.95.—SCOTT LUPIA
Photo etch scissors: All scales Mfd. by Xuron Corp., 62 Industrial
Park Road, Saco ME 04072;
www.xuron.com/. Over the past 40 or so years, I’ve had
the opportunity to watch technology take the model railroad hobby through a constant progression of improve- ments resulting in more accurate mod- els. Often this has been through the in- troduction of new modeling media to the hobby. Rolling stock has trans- formed from shake-the-box kits, to resin castings, to highly detailed, mul- ti-part kits and assembled models. Likewise structures have changed from die-cut wooden and simple plastic kits to wooden craftsman kits and on to highly detailed laser-cut kits. In both instances (rolling stock and structures) one of the new technologies that has appeared is the use of photo-etched metal parts. Photo-etching is a process where a
sheet of metal is specially treated such that an acid bath removes all of the un- wanted metal surrounding the desired parts. In some cases the process will also allow details to be etched into the
surface of the part. Each part is at- tached to the remaining sheet (called a fret) by small strips of metal. Remov- ing the parts require severing this con- nection. While some parts have tradi- tionally been removed using a new hobby knife blade (which gets dull in a hurry!), Xuron has introduced scissors especially designed for cutting photo- etched parts. Discussion with Xuron indicates that they worked extensively with modelers to develop the photo- etch scissors. I received a sample of the scissors
and put them to use on a variety of modeling projects. As you can see from the photo, the scissors have the famil- iar shaped Xuron cushioned handles and are spring-loaded to the open posi- tion. The cutting blades of the scissors are long and very thin, allowing them to reach into very confined spaces. The blades are sharpened to cut through the photo-etch easily, but unlike the Xuron flush cutters that we are accus- tomed to using to trim track, the blades overlap, shearing the material, rather than pinching through the met- al like the track cutters. We tried out our sample scissors on photo-etched frets from several differ- ent kits, as well as using them to trim thin metal sheet stock. Parts were sep- arated from several thicknesses of etched brass, as well as a set of parts from etched stainless steel. In each case we were able to reach into con- fined spaces to remove the parts from the frets. We were also able to cut very close to the part, leaving just a small part of the connecting web to be re- moved using a fine jewelers file. The Xuron Photo-etch Scissors work
well for removing the small, delicate photo-etched parts contained in many of the new model kits. The modeler should find this tool very useful during kit as- sembly of kits containing delicate photo- etched parts. The retail price is $14.99.—KEN BREHER
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RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN 83
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