Model Railroading > Walthers Steel Mill

Just wondering if any of you guys have assembled the blast furnace from Walthers? My set is from the original release which is probably 15 years old. I just recently began to assemble the kit. It's a huge kit with about 15-20 sheets of parts. My initial impression is that the directions are terrible and any of the furnace or vessel parts don't fit together worth a darn! I have the furnace and cast house completed. The furnace itself was extremely frustrating to build. It basically is two halves that don't even come close to matching. It is such an odd shape that I ended up using rubber bands to hold it together while the glue dried. When I assembled the cast house building, it ends up being out of "square" but is close enough that I will probably be the only one that notices. I think that in the end, it will make a decent building, but I am disappointed with the quality of the kit and even more so with the directions. It's almost easier to throw them away and refer to the pictures on the box! Dave

Ummm, all the larger cornerstone kits require a lot of extra work and bracing to make them fit together right. You really need to "think outside the box" when assembling one of these kits, and add tons of extra internal bracing. It's also a good idea to visit harbor freight and buy all kinds of clamps and jigs that will greatly help with kits of this nature.

Ted Curphey
Ontario, OR

Hi Dave,

Nope, you got it right the older kits had bad directions and parts that do not match up well, I built two for a friend some years back.
alot of filling, sanding etc. will be in order before it looks good. But it is possible.

I built the steel mill for our club exhibition layout and it was a piece of .... for going together. They use some sort of plastic which is similar to ABS so you need some heavy duty glue to hold. Clamps are your best friend on this.

Rick