First let me say I am not a rivet counter. I don’t fret if something is slightly oversized or undersized for its scale. I’m a big believer in the good enough approach to modeling which includes the close enough approach. But when something is so out of scale that it jumps out a you that hardly qualifies as good enough.
I am currently assembly the Laser Art Gas Station which is made by Branchline Trains. For the most part I have been very happy with this line. They are easy to assemble and the walls and roofs fit tightly together with a tab and slot system. However there is a serious flaw with the size of the gas pumps and the island they will stand on. They are way too big. These seem to be cast resin parts. Two sets of pumps were included, one for a 1930s era and the other for the 1950s which is what I model. The 1950 pumps are about 1.5 times larger than the J&L Pumps which I installed on another gas station I built. My first thought is they must have accidently included the pumps from an O scale version of the kit but the pillars on the island fit the slots for the canopy so it would appear these are the correct parts. I rarely do this with anything but I measured these pumps and discovered they are approximately 78 scale inches tall, 32 inches wide, and 22 inches deep. Even modern day pumps aren’t that big and 1950s era pumps weren’t even close to that. On top of that, the base of the island stands about 16 scale inches high. That means the top of the pump when sitting on the island is going to be almost 8 scale feet above the surrounding pavement. When did you see something like that.
Getting the scale of the parts of a kit is something that only has to be done correctly once so there is no excuse for something being this much out of scale. I can live with something that isn’t exact but it should at least be in the ballpark. These aren’t even close.
I used the Tichy visible gas pumps and the Bar Mills Shady Grove gas station, older than the era you’re modeling however, I have seen visible gas pumps still being used in the 1970s in West Virginia.
The nice little Tichy pumps can have the globes lit with a little grain of flea lamp.
32" x 22" actually isn’t that far off. It’s the 78" tall + the 16" island that is considerably taller than what I remember of the oldest pumps around in the 60s. Is it possible to cut them down credibly?
Lower the island by half? That’s a possibility, but consider that an island typically was embedded in the paved area in front of the station. If 8" was below grade, that would leave just 8" of curbing, island, whatever visible.
I agree the casting of the pumps needs correction, but sometimes you need to make lemonade when you get lemons?
There’s no way to save the pumps. They are already in the circular file. I’ll probably get a set of J&L pumps although I might look into the Tichy pumps with the globe that Ed suggested. Hopefully I can find a set of Esso pumps which is what the sign for this kit comes with. As for the island, I think the only way to cut it to size would be with the belt or disc sander but even that isn’t going to be easy to do and keep the thickness even. I think I’ll just raise the surrounding pavement using laminated layers of styrene. I have it in .020", 040", and 060" thicknesses. I’ll use a hobby knife to trace a hole for the island in a .020" sheet and then laminate that with .060 underneath leaving space under the hole I cut so the island can be dropped all the way to the plywood. That will give me .080" pavement around the 3/16 of an inch island which should get me into the close enough range. Originally this was going to be a front edge structure which to me allows for much less fudging but I had already changed the plan to move this more toward the middle where it won’t be quite as conspicious.
Do you think they are going to retool just to keep me happy? And even if they would, how long do you think that would take? If this was a defective part, I’m sure they would replace it but it’s not. It was just badly designed.
Maybe not for one person, but since you called attention to it and now it is in the media and has attracted public interest. Small cottage industry companies try to take care of their customers more than mass market companies.
Please don’t get snarky. I was trying to help. Be a little more courteous when people try to help you with an issue. Isn’t that sort of why you posted your issue in the first place? Chill!
I was suggesting you contact them about it in case they made a mistake and included the wrong parts from possibly an O scale kit or something. Also, there is always the possibility they could help in some other way like a refund, replacement with a different part, etc. They are good folks to deal with and try to work with their customers.
I never assumed they would redesign anything just for you. I doubt if you are THAT important.
Accually the hight is spot on for a Martin brand but the other dimentions are a bit off being 78x26x17 but I could see another pump brand being slightly wider and deeper. As far as island hight, seen them that high, don’t know the reason but have seen it and the reason may have been to protect the pumps. Late thing of intrest was the old visable gravity pump, those things could be tall and I used one often on the farm.
The pumps in Ed’s photo actually seem to be a bit too modern for most service stations in the 1950’s. My memory may be faulty, but as I recall, these came into use around the mid 1950’s and gradually replaced the ones with the round or oval globes. The ones with the globes were the dominant type until some time in the early 1960’s.
While I have never checked them for dimensional accuracy, it seems to me that JL Innovations no. 514 may be a lot closer to the most commonly seen design in the 1950’s.
I agree it doesn’t hurt to call or write and express a concern like this. Most of our hobby mfg’s want you to be happy. They’re not perfect and they know they deal with customers that tend to be a little more OCD than most – not that I’d say this is an issue here.[:)]
It may be the case they buy the parts, rather than make them. Somebody packing parts could include a batch that weren’t quiite right if a mistake slipped through in buying for a batch of kits. And sometimes there really IS a prototype like what is supplied, you just need a pointer to it. All those and more are possibilities here.
To be honest, the pumps looked OK so I showed the pics from the Branchline website to my ‘expert’ - my wife, who was a supervisor for Phillips 66 at one time. She said they didn’t look unusual, and she confirmed my memory that pumps 50-60 years ago were bigger than the ones now.
She also noted that at back then islands were much higher than now. She remembered stepping off one awkwardly and almost breaking her ankle. We had several gas stations within a block or two of my house as a kid (1960’s) and seems to me 16" or so would be about how high they really were.
Interestingly, the first thing she noticed was that the garage door on the left was placed where it would be almost impossible to get a car in and out, since it was blocked by the pump island.
Your memory differs quite a bit from mine. I can’t think of a single instance seeing a pump or an island that high above the surrounding pavement. It’s been said there is a prototype for everything so I’m not going to say there were no islands 16 inches above the pavement but I have to believe that would be the rare exception. One reason I say that is because in those days service station attendants pumped your gas and they might have customers on both sides of the island that they would be servicing at the same time. They would want to be able to step quickly from one side of the island to the other. A 16 inch high island would make that problematic. They would either have to climb up over the island or go around it which I would think would be a real nuisance if you had to do that dozens of times a day. To have both a 16 inch high island AND a 6 and a half foot high pump would really be stretching things. The top of the pump would be 94 inches or almost 8 feet above the pavement. The meter registering the gallons pumped and the total sale would be 6.5-7 feet above ground level. That makes no sense. Y
I just Googled “gas stations in the 50’s” and I don’t think they look that out of place. I did notice that some didn’t have islands, although most do, and I know it’s required to have an island now. I’ve even poured a few in my day, islands that I’ve had to form up with lumber, and the islands that used the steel stay-in-place forms, and have never done any over 8"
The fact that the picture which has been posted as well as the one on the front of the box show these large pumps indicate to me it isn’t a packaging error. Their own prototype shows the oversized pumps. That tells me it was intended to be that way.
As for me, I see little point in contacting them because I don’t see how they are going to do anything about it in time to help me. Even if they realized their error and decided to fix it, that isn’t going to happen quickly and I’m not going to wait for that to happen to complete this kit. I’m just going to have to make the best of it. I was thinking of getting some suitable J&L pumps which my LHS stocks but I remembered there were some extra pumps included with the Walthers Gas Station kit I built a few years ago and I think they might be a suitable replacement. I don’t think they are quite as nice as the J&L pumps but since this isn’t a structure that will sit near the isle, I think they will be good enough.
