Building kitbashing

[rovex]

I am interested in knowing whether anybody else uses any of the popular HO plastic building kits on their OO layouts and how you Anglicise them.

 

I'd particular like to see examples of kitbashing to make something very different from what is intended by the kit.

 

I've got a few ideas myself and indeed have bought a few kits to bash but never seem to have the time at the moment.

 

Rovex

 

[Barclay]

Hi I have used DPM modules - this is a Designer Bulk Pack, steel framed. I think it looks generic enough to work in a UK setting though I added the canopies from an Airfix kit:

 

 

Two of the background buildings here are from Walthers kits - again, I felt they were OK as they came, except for some structural alterations to make them background flats instead of full 3D buildings, but it's certainly true that some US kits look very American !

 

Edited August 19, 2021 by Barclay

[DCB]

The style and period of the US style factories are hard to relate to the UK.  We tended to go for single story factory units in the 20th Century in the era of reinforced concrete, sort of 1900 on, but had huge numbers of pre existing multi floor factories of the previous century in red brick with small windows, pretty much like the Airfix engine shed.   When we did go multi floor the lower walls per floor tended to be opaque, brick, wood etc with windows at waist height or higher.  UK was in recession of varying severity from 1918 on while US had a boom pre wall street crash which spawned large numbers of these reinforced concrete monstrosities.

[5050]

I've used several of them on different layouts, seen here on my 'Enigma Engineering' layout.  I raised the height of the walls with some courses of Wills stone sheets.

 

 

 

And on 'Braynerts Sidings', the building on the right is Walthers parts.  the others are mainly Wills sheet.

 

 

 

[David C]

I have looked at European plastic building kits for German layouts, but ended up not using them. I wouldn't consider using them on a 4mm scale UK layout for the simple reason is that there is a significant and sometimes very noticeable difference in size between 00 and H0. Additionally, a lot of kits from Europe are undersized even for H0. If they were full sized (1:1 scale), you wouldn't be able to swing a hamster in them, let alone a cat! Furthermore, a lot of the older H0 models don't fit together very well. I suspect that this is because the moulds are getting on a bit as some of them have been on the market for many years.

 

There are two possible exceptions I might make for using foreign kits on a UK layout and those are ones made by Walthers and Auhagen. Barclay and 5050 have posted photos of their versions of the former above and I have seen other layouts which have featured them and the results seem perfectly acceptable visually to me. Auhagen (available from Golden Valley Hobbies and elsewhere) are a former East German company who now seem to be producing the highest quality plastic building kits. From the UK modellers' point of view, they are now making a range of plastic brick panels, windows, doors, chimneys etc from which individuals can design and make their own industrial buildings - the Auhagen Modular System as they refer to it. This is the link to their catalogue: the Modular System starts on about page 118. https://auhagen.de/csdata/epaper/produkt_katalog/#118. 

 

Hope this is of interest.

 

David C

 

 

[zarniwhoop]

My experience of European HO kits for houses and similar is that yes, some are far too small (but maybe there is a place for them, since most real European stations would need a lot of space if done close to real size), but the real problem is that many of the kits are very area-specific. Yes, Auhagen have good germanic blocks of flats and provide some useful parts (doors, gutters, etc), but almost every other house, chalet or farmbuilding kit is very specific to a particular area.

 

For OO I would not dream of using HO kits, except if set back (along the lines of forced perspective - OO around the tracks, HO set a bit back, smaller (1:100 or 1:120) further back.  That reminds me - a lot of the Auhagen kits seem to be in the 1:87 to 1:100 range (which in itself makes them small for HO).

 

No idea about American, unless you are building a modern town (1990 or later) then I don't think American buildings will be appropriate.

 

For houses from Faller, Kibri, etc you can probably change the roofing style, maybe join two together for a longer building if you can actually get two of the same kit but beyond that I wonder if the effort would be better spent on scratchbuilding (or maybe use only doors and windows from a kit). It also depends on what sort of walls you want - for GB I could fetishise brick bonds and brick colours, for Northern Germany / Belgium the brickwork is different and for Austria brickwork on houses is "uncommon".

 

The best use I can think of for European house kits in OO is to use a few for a 1960s+ semi-suburban area where there are bungalows and chalet bungalows with large amounts of green lawns around them and plenty of space for parking. But again, set back a little (assuming you have room, most of us don't).

[Steamport Southport]

I've bought a couple of the Mini Art kits.

 

Not far off 4mm scale. Bit smaller even though they say 1/72 scale. Certainly not H0 scale.

 

https://miniart-models.com/catalogue/categories/

 

Got the Workshop and Freight Shed. The Workshop to be used as a small industrial diesel engine shed and the freight shed as an industrial building. I'll be replacing the roofs for something a bit more British. I might go for Wills asbestos cladding.

 

Made in the Ukraine and are good quality plastic.

 

Got them from Amazon. I think I paid about £20 the pair and that included free postage.

 

 

Jason