Metcalfe Service Station Tweaks

[47137]

I want to build a model service station for my S scale project and buying the Metcalfe 00 kit seemed an easy way to get some scale drawings. It seemed sensible to build it and see what it looked like and the kit went together very easily over three evenings with a few tweaks which may be of interest so here goes:

 

 

1. I trimmed the height of the front wall by 3mm or so to try to make the building look a bit wider. The cut is immediately above the black joist over the service bay entrance, in line with the blue fascia panels.

 

2. I cut all of the external corners and rebuilt them with the left and right sides of the building inside the front and back walls. So I have a model about 2mm narrower and 2mm deeper than the designer intended, but there is less bare card to see.

 

3. I padded out the thicknesses of the parapet walls left right and front to make them look more substantial.

 

The changes to the outside walls meant the front roof had to be trimmed about 2mm each side, but it fitted in with the main building roof unmodified on top no problems. The bare card edges are touched in with acrylics from Games Workshop and some felt pens.

 

4. I made an inner wall for the showroom side from cream coloured card. The kit has an oversize glazing panel to make a spacer for an inner wall, but no wall piece. I also cut a rectangular panel out of the showroom floor, so I can drop the floor out and put a car inside it one day.

 

I am rather impressed with the design of this kit, it seems to have been thought through very well. Hopefully the S scale model will be a similar arrangement but with the main building built from stone instead of brick.

 

- Richard.

 

[CourthsVeil]

Nice build this, well done!

If one isn't afraid of making such amendments, such structures usually gain very much. Recommended!

  Armin

[14Steve14]

Glad to see that you are not just building the kit as it was designed. Well done.

[47137]

I usually make my own buildings - after an upbringing of long-lost Superquick kits this is only my third Metcalfe model. The first one was their Country Station - it ended up in the bin on day 2 because I tried to modify it so extensively it ceased to make a building. The second was a freebie signal box given away with the Railway Modeller, which I may strip apart and rebuild in S scale. It is nice to have the windows already made!

 

I think the important thing with card kits is too keep the modifications subtle, unless you are planning a "scratch build aided by commercial parts". Otherwise you find areas of unprinted wall and so on which you cannot hide without major surgery.

 

I'm still quite chuffed how the roof sections came together.

 

- Richard.