I ordered their set of Old Town Buildings the first week of May, paying through PayPal. After not seeing anything, I finally emailed and tried calling them. No reply via email and no one answered when I called them. Finally, filed a dispute with PayPal. Has anyone else had any dealings with them?
In late 2013, the couple that owned Alpine Models announced that they were retiring, liquidating inventory and seeking a buyer for their tooling. I can’t recall where I read that, but I never saw any follow up and the website is still active. They used to sell their kits on eBay, but I just checked Alpine listings and didn’t see any of their auctions. There are several hobby shops/internet sellers around the country offering Alpine Models kits. Many of Alpines kits have been around since the mid 50s, starting as Ayres Models, then Suydam, next was California Models and finally Alpine Models.
I have built several of their buildings. They seem to be cutting corners ( getting cheaper). The last one I tried to build was their train station. The instructions said to install the window assemblies, there are were no assemblies, just a pile of sticks. I tried email with no luck, I finally got a guy to answer the phone. He told me it was sort of like a scratch build. I also had a problem with their caboos interior kit, it was missing parts. No luck with email, just lots of phone call attempts.
By the way there were lots of other parts on the kit that didn’t match the instructions. The station is now my spare parts bin.
I found them on Facebook and they have not posted in a couple years.
After opening a resolution with PayPal, I got an email yesterday from Alpine that my order had shipped. After seeing some of the previous comments, I’m interested to see what shows up.
Keep us up to date on what you receive. I have several of there kits too. I really like their older no longer manufactured SP Depot kit.
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.
Well, I finally received the kits from Alpine Scale Models on 6/1/17. The email that they had been shipped was my only communication with them. I have to agree with your assessment, Bis. A few plastic bags with sticks and cut out walls in them, with no identifying marks of any kind. It’s pretty much a scratch build, with a couple of illustrations on the instruction sheet. Angle plates come in handy to get the sections square. One of which is a template to build the foundation, that you cover with a sheet of wax paper to assemble it on. This is an advanced modeler’s kit. If I take my time (probably a couple of weeks), I should be able to muddle my way through. As far as buying from them again… maybe. They’ll need to improve their customer service before then.
Keep us posted, I got so frustrated that I gave up.
Bis, as I progress, I’ll be taking pictures along the way, posting them to Photobucket and posting the in-progress and the completed buildings.
Your pictures look like the mattboard kit I built as a yard office many years ago; when they were called California Model. Good to see you have the angle blocks to help keep things square.
Will be looking forward to your posts.
I ran into snag no. 1 today. As mentioned in a previous comment about missing pieces, a piece for the foundation stringers was missing. And, looking at the instructions, I can see that some other pieces are missing. Rather than try to contact Alpine, I’ll be making a trip to my favorite brick and mortar store to pick up some scale lumber.
Well, I have two of the kits assembled. These are definitely NOT beginner kits. Aside from missing pieces, I managed to muddle through two of the kits; a general store and the blacksmith shop.
This is the foundation. Even with matching it exactly to the applied template, it still ended up too large for the sides, rear and front wall sheets.
Notice gap in corner. All corners had this gap. This is where the scale lumber came in handy.
Rear view
Side view
Front view
The following pictures are of the blacksmith shop.
End view. The straw is for easy replacement of interior light.
Opposite end. This end will be enclosed by a corral for saddle horses tourists can rent for trail rides.
Same view with signs added.
Front view. I used small strips, albeit a little oversize, of an index card for the front hinges.
They turned out good. You have more patience than I.
Sorry…But I have to laugh…LOL…I started building Suydam kits back in 1953, when I was 11yrs old. Over the next couple yrs, I built just about all of them, including the tin metal ones that had to be soldered…which I accomplished using My Dad’s space gun looking soldering iron. The plans You show look exactly like the Suydam ones that were in the kit. For being a young kid…I did not believe they were all that hard and for 1.25 for the truck terminal kit, it was affordable, with My paper-route money. For those angle corners…most times I did not use them anyway! I used square Balsa wood and made a frame with it for the whole wall with the wall laying flat and making the frame for all four walls…then glueing the walls together. A lot stronger and easier to paint without warping. Some of the buildings I still have today and have never come apart in all those yrs. I used Ambroid wood glue as some of You will remember the type in the tube.
Take Care! [:D]
Frank
Marlon
VERY VERY GOOD!!!
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.
You mentioned using some square stock where the walls did not meet at the corners. Actually, if there were better detail instructions, they would have mentioned the square stock and it should have been included. This is the same constuction that is used in most Campbell kits when joining wood siding at the corners. Good looking job, by the way.
The corner gap is where you would glue on a bit of square stripwood that would represent in many wooden structures. This was a pretty typical scratchbuilding technique years ago, so they may have just assumed everyone knew it.
jim
Marlon
Northeastern Scale Lumber makes all kinds of scale lumber. After building several Campbell Kits I fell in love with their type construction.
I went to the Northeastern Scale Lumber site and they have 3/16” basswood corner posts listed but no pictures. Their part number is 316CRNPOST.
I decided to make my own corner post for my scratch building and it came out very good.
Here is a link to a scratch build on my blog where I show how I made the corner posts.
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/2013/01/scratch-building-1916-sears-catalog-home.html
I lucked out with my scratch