I found one of these in a flea market and began looking over the entire collection. Have any of you used buildings from this Hallmark series for your layout? They would appear to be a good choice for small towns and back ground areas where space is limited. I’m not sure I’d want one on the very front of the layout, but they would work well for forced perspective. The ornaments appear to be only a hair less than HO scale and show selective compression at its best.
If nothing else, you could rob the interior for great detail parts!
The foreground buildings are from Hallmark’s “The Sarah Plain & Tall Collection”, 1994. I have the Train Station, the General Store, Sarah’s Prarie Home, and Sarah’s Maine Home, left to right in the pic. The front door on the Prarie houst (tan one) is 2’x7’. A door from this time period would have been 2’8" or 2’10" x 7’ (modern front doors are 3’x6’8"), so it is fairly close to HO. As previously mentioned, they’re probably best away from the front of the layout. The “Sarah” series is Christmas oriented and works for me seasonaly. There have been other series that have the same apparent scale. Flea markets or yard sales would be the place to look, as the E thing will be collectors looking for top dollar for “collectables” [8D]
The Hallmark Ornaments can be in ANY scale. I have 2 churches that come out very close to Nscale. You can compare them to the Village Church LL has been selling for years. THe Veranda Terbine c/b very close to Z scale.
Some of the models can be reworked for model use. A new roof may be reqqired once you get the snow off. There may be a website & *bay collector for you to get other items in the collection. For example, the Polar Express seems to be a 1yr product.
I too have the general store and Sarah’s Maine home. They are very nice high quality HO structures, but like you I use them for my Christmas layout only. I wish there were more, as they are very nice.
