Packaging And Contents
Although the retail package appears surprisingly compact, it does contain everything you'll need (even plenty of Taiwanese air; there's quite a bit of space left inside). It quickly becomes apparent that this train is a rather small descendant of the awe-inspiring steam locomotives of yore.
The packaging material is not crumbly Styrofoam, but rather polyurethane and cardboard. That means you don't have to vacuum up tiny foam fragments off of the floor after you unpack this train's components. Apart from the packaging material, we find one 20”-long track segment, a thin user guide in leaflet form, plenty of screws, some rubber gaskets for installing the hard drive, a mounting bracket for the train, and even a small piezo speaker.
The train, composed of the locomotive and the tender, comes already assembled. Extra parts come in small plastic bags, making sure that they stay in pristine, dust-free condition during storage and shipping.
As far as packaging and accessories are concerned, this case is like any other enclosure. Well, almost. Because there are several protruding parts, I had to take extra care that it didn't get scratched up during assembly.
I discovered that laying this platform down on a duvet or pillow makes handling a little easier. Even after building this thing up and tearing it back down three times, there's not a single scratch on its powder-coated black surface or acrylic windows. Why did we build it so many times? I tried two different motherboards and the motor kit, requiring some major changes to our parts list. But let’s not jump too far ahead of ourselves. First, a discussion about that unique power supply.
