I’ve been trying to find a HO scale rural brick and mortar U.S. Post Office kit or build up. I found a Plasticville and Vollemer one, but they were not brick and mortar. Any help will be appreciated, Thanks.
Have you considered scratch building or a kitbash? There are a lot of supplies available for scratch building. You could simply cover a Plasticville kit with a brick fascia, it’s available in either styrene or thick paper.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
Don’t limit your search to buildings labled “post office”
There are lots of kits for brick buildings, many of which could be repurposed as a post office just by changing or adding signs. Some other minor modifications optional
I surely don’t know a lot about USPO buildings. My impression is that they usually lease existing structures. I know of a local one that’s lost its lease and the owner doesn’t want to renew.
So I went to Walthers and entered “store” in their advance search. First one up was this one:
https://www.walthers.com/country-store-kit-6-x-3-5-8-x-2-3-4-quot-15-2-x-9-2-x-6-9cm
It’s free-standing and rural and brick. Just leave out the gas pumps.
Ed
This is the old Plasticville model:
I think I got it back in the Eisenhower administration. It’s a very small building that’s tucked away in the back of my layout. I would never have bought it for this layout, but since I had it, I cleaned it up a bit and plopped it down.
What do you want the Post Office for? Are you planning to make a full-fledged scene with customers, a loading dock and mail trucks, or is it just because you think your town needs a post office? For a more involved model, I’d look at other kits and adapt them to be a post office.
Walthers has a Bachmann Plasticville School that might work.
My town had a nice old brick post office with a cupula, as I recall. It was torn down to make more money for the shopping center’s developers. The post office got stuck in trailers for a couple of years, without even so much as a lobby for the customers, and it’s now a non-descript store front between a dance studio and a lame Italian restaurant. The mail carriers don’t even work out of there anymore - they use space in the post office in the next town.
Google Image Search is your friend here. There are many images of small town PO’s in a variety of styles
Here is but one that looks like an easy build.
I would think that you could make a good argument for the Woodland Scenics First Bank Building serving as a U.S. Post Office building.
http://woodlandscenics.woodlandscenics.com/show/Item/12200/page/1
Rich
Another would be this small kit if you could find one on eBay. Look at the Harford Building.
http://www.slmonline.com/shoppingcart/store.cgi?action=buildingsnew.htm&uid=29864
Jim
For really nice brick 'n mortar buildings look at Design Preservation Models (DPM) kits. Here’s 8 pages worth from the Hobbylinc website.
FYI: Just be aware that you will need to sand the edges flat in order to get the walls to be flush with one another. And they make very beautiful models when you are done with them. Worth consideration…
Tom
Several of those SLM structures would seem suitable, but most of them are “temporarily out of production” which is too bad.
Rich
Agreed.
I would consider First Bank as a reasonable possibility.
Rich
You’d be surprised, though, at how often SLM buildings show up on eBay. Of course, not much help if you need one right now.
Jim
Yep, the Redwood Street building would be perfect, and it is even lettered for the U.S. Post Office.
Rich
The OP asked for a"rural" post office.
I guess the question might be HOW rural?
Ed
Ahh, yes. But were rural post offices brick and mortar or simply wood frame?
Rich
In sparsely-populated South Dakota, where the census had to count dogs and cats to reach 100 in a given zip code, the “Rural post office,” was usually a lean-to addition to one end of the general store - and the storeowner’s wife served as postmistress. Such structures were never brick, but could have corrugated iron siding.
In larger settlements, not truly rural, the PO was usually a storefront, identical in architecture to the others on the block.
Rapid City, the only large concentration of population in the area, has a large, modern masonry structure - concrete columns, tilt-up curtain walls - for its Main Post Office. The bottom 40% of the curtain walls are brick, with windows. The top 60% is concrete and appears to have been poured with the columns. Note that this is a BIG structure. Uncompressed, the building and its parking areas would be about one tatami (3x6 feet) in HO scale.
The same Google search that allowed me to refresh my memory also came up with several very nice, reasonably small modern rural brick Post Office buildings. Google Armour, SD, post office, and select images. The Armour PO would be an easy scratchbuild.
I rather suspect that the small brick structures replaced wooden and wood-frame structures fairly recently, probably in an attempt to make the facilities fireproof. At least one is tacked onto the end of a retail sales structure.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I think perhaps we should give it a break. We’ve supplied lots of ideas. Now we need to hear from Willy6 (the OP) to give us further guidance. If any is needed.
Ed
I use a non descript building with a mailbox in front.
The 1930s era brick post office in my home town looked a little like the Life Like “police station” kit that Walthers still offers.
Dave Nelson
to 7j43k I do not understand why you would feel the need to throw a wet blanket on a good thread. I did not pose the question but certainly was enjoying the discussion. I do not recall see any guidelines as to how many responses are allowed before the OP is required to respond or give further details. It is fine to ask the OP for further information but I feel it is out of line to suggest to other members that they should stop responding. I guess I am a bit touchy on this type of comment because it happened to me. I posed a question that drew a lot of responses with a lot of people wanting to get into the discussion. No one asked me for additional details pertaining to my question, but at some point someone decided that they needed to say that people should quit providing further comments because I had not yet responded with a thank you for the info I had received so far. I was trying to take in all of the info I was receiving and I had not decided what I wanted to say about it as yet. I really enjoy and greatly value this forum, especially since I am not aware of any other modeler in my immediate area to talk to. But I did not appreciate getting burned by someone. Enough said.