Time for another viewpoint: I have a Bowser pacific and it is a fine runner. It has much more tractive effort than any other steam loco I own. It was not hard to assemble, it does require you to rivet the valve gear. This is not difficult, if you make the rivet too tight and motion is not free, you file off the rivet and try again. Otherwise, construction is straightforward. The boiler detail as cast is crude by todays standards, the hardest part of building my model was removing the cast on piping. This of course doesn't have to be done. I wanted to detail it to near the level of todays plastic steam offerings.
For what its worth: The first steam loco kit I built (over 20 years ago) was an MDC 2-8-0. This kit does not include valve gear, and may be a good place to start. It builds into a nice model which exhibits good slow speed running. I built mine to see if I could detail a loco well. Satisfied with the job I did, I then built a Mantua 2-6-2, selected because it was the cheapest Mantua kit, and Mantua kits come with valve gear which must be riveted also. I wanted to try my hand at riveting on the cheapest model possible. I had no trouble with it, and it is a so so runner. (I have not installed decoders in either of these locos, they are in storage now) Once I felt comfortable with my ability to build steam kits, I (many years later) bought a Bowser kit. If you are interested in building steam from kits and have not done so, you may want to follow a similar path, start with easier, less expensive kits and go from there.
