I have had the opportunity to build some of George Selio’s Fine Scale Miniature kits. To say that they take a long time to build is an understatement. But, the results can be amazing!! One of the few problems that I have with the kits is trying to incorporate them into the layout. That is to say, I built several of them over the years, such as Franklin Watchworks and Skinners Row. Of course, I want them near the front of the layout to “show off” all of the details, but sometimes that is hard to do. Now, the Coaling Tower and Ice House were naturals for my yard (which is currently under construction). I have learned a lot about structure building and have scratch built 10 structures using some of George’s technique. They say that copying another individual’s ideas (or in this case technique) is the highest form of flattery. By the way, I have 6 Merit awards for scratch building my own structures using some of George’s ideas. Thoughts from others about FSM. Do you think that they are worth the money? One pet peeve, I dislike people who buy up these kits with no intention of ever building them. What a waste!!
Hi,
Yes it’s sad to to see so much kits from FSM or South River Models Work are buy whithout any intention to be build but somewhere just to win money at some auction like Ebay.
Anyway they are amazing kit; but I never buy and build one because I model in Nscale.
The FSM kits give some inspiration for my scratchbuild projects like the SRMW kits.
I have builds some several crafstman kits from Blair Line/Blair Mills and the results are amazing.
I project to build more for the expand of my layout.
This one was inspired by the FSM and I build it only from pics published in the magazines and in the book about the FSM. It’s completely scratch including the dust collectors and build in plastic from Evergreen plastic sheet.
Marc
This one was also inspired by one put in the corner of the outside of dowtown near the Stromboli manufacturing on the FSM RR.
Without collectors these companies would be out of business. Some collect to someday build and others collect to just collect and a third group collect to someday make a profit.
I just started my first. I am sitting out here in the desert in AZ in my motorhome and it looks like a good all winter project. I have the castings and walls primed so I can start the fun part today. I think it may be one of the most fun projects ever.
One thing good about the guys who purchase them for resale. If I like this I will want more and the ebay resellers are about the only place you can get them now that Selio is out of the business of selling big kits. I will probably post comments as I go
Collectors play an important economic function for limited-run items. First, they increase the initial demand to make it practical to have sufficiently large enough production to be practical. Second, they provide a source for those who didn’t acquire the items when they were introduced. So, please, no more whining about collectors and presently unbuilt/unused items.
Mark
Even George Sellios himself has said that the majority of his kits are purchased by people as an investment and they will probably never be assembled by the original purchaser.
The FSM and similar kits amazing to look at, yet I have never purchased one. I find they are a bit too funk-a-delic-artsy in appearance and regional in building style to work on my layout. If, as I hear, he is going back to straight forward kits rather than scenes, then perhaps an individual kit will someday appear on my layout.
I agree. I suspect without collectors many of the S scale items I buy would never have been made. So I love collectors.
Enjoy
Paul
Marc, I love your scratchbuilt Jeffries Point Staving and Heading building. I built the FSM kit and found it to be amazing! There are a lot of good ideas floating around in the model railroading community. I use a lot of these ideas and modify others to create completely new buildings to fit my layout. I see others points about collectors. I guess they have their place in the hobby. I started buying FSM kits several years ago beginning with the Skinner’s Row kit (which was the first one that I built. I have been buying one a year from George ever since. Needless to say, I have built about 1/3 of them to date. Yes, I did use e-Bay to buy out of production kits that I wanted to use on my layout. But man, if the wife was to find out the prices of the kits from e-Bay, I would probably be in big trouble (but then again, she does not understand about brass locomotives either).