The Phlatt Car arrived from the USA on Monday 19th May via DHL. There were two boxes and everything was exceptionally well packed and packaged. The smaller box was heaviest as this contained all the truck parts including wheels and bearings already pressed onto their axles. The larger box had all the parts for the car - all timber cut and shaped and all holes drilled.
This all went together smoothly, just checking everything is square and flat as one goes along. The instruction suggest adding the decking, varnishing the wood strips and then painting the rest of the flat. I left off the decking, painted the rest of the flat with primer, undercoat and black top coat to the underside. I then added the decking. Again the instructions sugesst a thinned black paint to highlight the grain. I used Colron wood dye (American Chestnut) which I think has come out really well. A lot of sanding and smoothing has stripped the sides of the flat back to bare wood, but this should give me a good base for painting. All the detail pieces were cleaned and painted with Blue Hammerite smooth, these to be added after the top coat has hardened.	Assembled both pairs of trucks in less than a couple of hours. Instructions are very clear and most impressive was the way the hardware was packed like a tool roll of sealed plastic pockets. A pre drilled hole in one of the lower bolsters was offset by 100 thou, and I worried about this for a time. On building my first truck I realised that the design allowed some slack in assembly before tightening everything up. However, I did enlarge said hole and made sure everything was square before tightening and using threadlock. The instructions make painting an option - 'rust having a certain charm'. I deliberated for a while and decided that I would not paint this set. There was a lot of degreasing to do and I felt I wouldn't be able to do justice to the inside of the 2x1 in tubing - so being basically lazy and painting my least favourite job, I left well alone. I'm also impatient and wanted to get on building them. I'll spray them with WD40 regularly and see how we get on. Unfortunately, when I got to the track the difference between US standards and UK standards became apparent. The 7 1/4 in Gauge UK standards have a back to back about 70 thou smaller. I had to strip down the trucks remove bearings and wheels and cut back the shoulder on the axle by 1.8mm (0.9mm per side). Fortunately this was fairly simple to achieve. Something for non US buyers to be aware of when they buy US equipment.