Superior bakeries and more vintage kits.

Spurred on by the Art Curren kit mingling project, I landed another haul of vintage kits from the 'bay, including a pair of Revell Superior Bakeries - one boxed and the other pre-built, I've lost count of how many of these I have now but it must be at least a dozen.

I also picked up an Atlas Lumber Yard with office, another of those classic kits that must have featured on pretty much every US outline layout ever made, as well as numerous kit-bashing articles and features over the years.

The final kit in this lot is a vintage Heljan NMRA Headquarters Building, a curious model that replicates the custom built building in Chattanooga, TN that houses the administration staff for the NMRA.  

The real-life building has been designed to look like a typical railroad station and is complete with overhanging roof and upper viewing tower.

The kit contains the usual Heljan pre-coloured plastic components and captures the shape of the building well, although I'm not sure of the colour chosen as the kits dark red brick seems at odd with the images I have seen of the real building.

The kit seemed like it would be a good starting point for a kitbash into a smaller station building, and as it was going cheap I picked it up.  However looking at the parts it has a few problems, including poor fit and also a large section of the wall has the NMRA sign and logo cast into the plastic.

These kits will join the growing pile of vintage plastic in the spare room, which more than ever resembles the stockroom of an eighties model shop!  I really do need to get some more listings onto ebay to clear some space.

Can you tell me how to get... how to get to center street.

Way back in the mid-eighties the Hornby catalogue carried a full page photo spread showing an urban street with diner, shops and cinema.  The pictured scene really sparked my interest and I waited impatiently for the kits to arrive in my local model shop.  They never did, and by the next year there was no mention of the kits as they quietly disappeared from the release schedule.

I forgot all about those kits until a few months ago when I came across an ebay auction for a cinema kit from Tyco.  The kit looked exactly like the unreleased Hornby model from all those years ago and after some googling I discovered the Tyco 'Center Street' series of kits manufactured and marketed in the US in the early eighties.

That particular ebay auction ended at well over £30 which seemed steep for such an old kit, and I was far outbid, but over the months since then I've only seen a handful of them come up for auction.  This one was pre-built and ended well below a tenner so I've finally got a "Hornby" cinema after all these years. 

 The model is made from nicely detailed plastic parts, similar to the AHM or Heljan kits of the day, with coloured plastic and stickers for the marquee and posters.

The printing is surprisingly low quality compared to the decals that Revell produced in the fifties, with the marquee text being particularly low in detail, almost looking hand written instead of suggesting the removable plastic lettering that a real cinema would use.

The model makes use of the real-life 'Lowes' cinema chain name, which may explain something about why it has not been reissued, no doubt there are licensing issues with the brand name and because the lettering is moulded in it will be expensive to re-tool it for a reissue.

I'm planning to use this kit as part of my entry for the square-foot diorama at this years NMRA convention in October.

If you're interested in finding out more about these kits here's a great website dedicated to the Tyco range including a detailed list of these kits http://www.ho-scaletrains.net/tycokitsandbuildings/id49.html

Sun-a-rise early in the morning...

I picked up a selection of Morning Sun reference books at Benson, including a duplicate copy of Color Pictorial Vol 2, as they were so keenly priced it would be a crime not to buy them.

These morning sun books are an excellent resource for modelling reference, and each volume covers a specific time period or subject.

I'm planning to use rolling stock from the late sixtes/early seventies for Godinez, and these books are a goldmine of suitable reference.

The most in-depth of the books I bought is the Rock Island Color Guide to Freight and Passenger Equipment, a comprehensive 120 page guide to the boxcars and wagons that roamed the 7000 miles of the Rock Islands many routes.

I have a couple of Eastern Car Works kits for the ACF 70 Ton covered hoppers that I will be repainting for Rock Island, the kit is an exact match for the picture on page 58.

These hoppers were used to haul cement, so it's not exactly right for the grain silo on Godinez, but the kits were cheap and at least they are correct for the railroad.

NMRA Winter Meet - Benson

This years exhibition schedule got off to a good start with the NMRA winter meet at Benson in Oxfordshire.  

 I drove up to the small village early on Saturday morning and spent an enjoyable couple of hours browsing the secondhand stalls and watching trains on the many excellent layouts.  I also took a turn at the throttle on Dan Spalding's 'Galatia, Kansas' layout.

I'm on the lookout for suitable rolling stock for Godinez, but there wasn't much Rock Island to be had, other than some old Athearn blue box kits which aren't detailed enough for the layout, I don't want to take on a lot of super detailing projects so I'm looking to pick up some more modern models for the layout.  

I did pick up a couple of old Details West boxcar kits for a quid each, they should be suitable for repainting into Rock Island versions.

The top floor of the hall was filled with bring and buy tables and I picked up a selection of Morning Sun reference books on Rock Island for a very keen price, and much cheaper than importing from the US.

Here are a few pictures of the various layouts that were in attendance. I forgot to take a note of the names as I took the photographs, so apologies to any modelers that are mis-credited!


‘Mill Falls’ HO - Mike Carter

‘Windsor, Colorado.’  HO - Peter Everitt

The Worcester N gauge modules

'Simply Narrow Gauge’ On30  Keith Willows

'Sankei City' Japanese Layout Z - Keith Willows

‘Roestock’ - Ian Turner

‘Saw Pit Creek’ HO - Bearwood Group

‘Galatia, KS’  HO - Dan Spalding

Kitbashing HO Model Railroad Structures

I've found plenty of great kitbashing articles in my old collection of Model Railroader magazines and some of the best ones were written by Art Curran, a name synonymous with the art of adapting plastic kits to create new structures.

I recently bought an old copy of Arts book 'Kitbashing HO Model Railroad Structures, an excellent collection of some of Arts kitbashing articles from Model Railroader.  The book runs to 88 pages and includes over 23 structure projects, all of them based on the old plastic kits from Revell, Con Cor, AHM, IHC, Heljan and Pola.

The book was last updated in the mid-nineties, and most of the kits are now long out of production, but thanks to ebay it is still possible to find all of them at reasonable cost.

The book also contains both the classic 'Hardly Able' manufacturing company and 'Superior Sandwich' kitbashes that I'm intending to replicate with my own upcoming project using various vintage kits.

The instructions are written in the usual 'Model Railroader' style, with clear diagrams and measurements for making the various cuts and joins in the kit parts, as well as a nicely detailed list of additional parts used to make each building.

So if you are interested in doing a spot of kitbashing, or kit-mingling as Art calls it, then grab yourself a copy of this great old book, or pick up some old Model Railroader magazines at your next swapmeet.