London Underground Station, ref C66008W - Part 1

Hello and welcome to my first blog about the hobby of building models from plastic bricks. The first name that comes to mind for most people is Lego™, which until recently I thought was the only serious name in the game. How wrong I was.

I have recently returned to building with Lego™ and other similar bricks. Unlike some I am not precious about only using the brand leader, but am willing to try some of the others on the market to compare their quality. In the 1960s and early 70s I had what seemed like a lot of Lego bricks, but looking back it was probably only 2 or 3 pounds in weight. At that time there were none of the special pieces that make up so much of today’s hobby. Most were basic rectangular bricks with a few round and curved pieces, and the roof slopes. My particular favourite was building ships: liners, cargo ships, tugboats, warships. With a little imagination anything could be built, providing you could imagine curves where there were right-angled corners.

Lego was not part of my life until my own children came along and I was then amazed at the range of themes and parts available. We acquired a big bag of assorted pieces and several sets arrived as birthday or Christmas presents. This time saw the start of other brands of bricks, in particular Mega Blocks, which produced a few large sets at competitive prices. My son was keen to build these models according to the instructions, but seemed unwilling to make his own creations. These big sets were sold on locally and the mixed Lego was kept for future grandchildren.

A few years ago my son gave me the Lego Bonsai Tree as a birthday present. This rekindled my interest, though I did not take it further than changing the foliage on the tree at irregular intervals. While on holiday in Germany I saw several sets by Cobi that built well known ships such as the Bismarck, Hood and Titanic. Searching for these online I spotted the London Underground station by CaDA, which seemed excellent value. I ordered that and thus started a new hobby.

Set Summary

Title:  London Underground Station, ref C66008W

Maker: CaDA                          No of pieces: 1836

I ordered the set direct from CaDA in China and did wonder about how long it would take for delivery to UK. The website said to allow 9 to 18 days. From placing the order to the courier dropping it off at my home was almost exactly 7 days. A great job by CaDA and the various carriers along the way.

The box had become slightly squashed in transit, but nothing serious, probably due to the handling procedures of the various couriers and airlines. First impressions of the box and its contents were favourable. The box was a good weight, very sturdy and featured images of the completed model. On opening the contents were in two smaller boxes with an “Underground” logo. There was no indication of what was in each box so I started by opening the left-hand one. It contained about ten bags of parts and two instruction booklets labelled 1 and 2.

         

Three bags were unmarked, of these one contained a string of LED lights with a USB plug, one some rubber bands and the other a number of larger plates. The remainder of the bags were marked either “1” or “2”. A quick investigation revealed the other box contained bags marked “3” or “4”. At this stage I couldn’t help trying the light string. They plug into a standard USB port and have a button to change the function. Annoyingly this must be pressed eight times before reaching a non-flashing setting.

This being my first build of a CaDA set I wondered about the quality in comparison with Lego. In my opinion there is not much difference between them. The bricks seem to be of the same grade of ABS plastic and fit firmly together with a good consistency of colour.

The instructions are purely pictorial with no words. Generally there are three or four sub-stages per double page, each starting with a list of the pieces needed and an illustration of where they fit. The first was very simple - take one brick! Later sub-stages were more complex, otherwise the instruction booklets would have been huge! All proceeded steadily and in most cases it was obvious what parts were needed, of what colour and where to fit them. What is very useful is how the instructions indicate the length of tiles, otherwise the builder might be guessing whether it should be 1x3 or 1x4.

Only twice did I have an issue. The first was part way through building the base, which contains the mechanism to operate the entry gates. Somehow I had a piece slightly too high so the floor which fitted above it was not level. This was purely my error in interpreting the instructions. I went back and fixed it, which was a bit of a nuisance. The other time was later when I selected the wrong colour transparent bricks for two of the lights. Although I was working in daylight I hadn’t noticed that the bricks should have been blue not yellow until a later illustration. That was an easy fault to correct and not a significant one.

By the end of section A the base has been constructed, along with the mechanism to operate the gates, the outline of the building and pavement was complete. In particular the silvered grids for the escalator treads and kerb-edge drains look very effective.

When section B is completed most of the ground floor detail and the front elevation is finished. The entry gates are in place and working, most of the lights are in place and the news stand and office are done. A point here is the block through which the wire for the LEDs is led – this is just a grey cube in the office, whereas everything else looks like a functional part of the building.

Book 1 continues with the first parts of stage C, presumably this is to complete the lighting and balance the distribution of parts between boxes.

My thoughts at this stage.

The quality of the bricks is great. The clarity of the instructions is very good but not quite excellent – see my comments above. Any sub-assemblies fit well into the main structure.

What is frustrating is the way the bricks are bagged up. There is no guide as to which to use other than the number, which relates to an entire section. It was not far into the first section, by A18 if I remember correctly, that I had four bags open in addition to the base plates. Also the bags are labelled numerically, 1 ,2, 3 etc, but the sections in the instructions are A, B,C etc. It’s a small point but shows a lack of consistency.