Hello, I am wondering if someone can point me to a company that makes affordable down town buildings in the O scale. Something like “city classics” would be just what i’m looking for. They are about 20 dollars a kit and have high architectural detail, but they only have HO buildings.
I’m going to be modeling part of new york china town.
Thanks!
Welcome to the forums.
Now, go away. I don’t mean that in a negative way, just I think you would do better over on the Classic Toy Trains section of these forums. Most of the folks here are in N and HO. Many have a Christmas Lionel, American Flyer or Marx in their past, but the folks over there are still in the larger scales.
Good luck,
Richard
With respect to building kits, there are not many for structures the size you want. There are built up structures 6 stories that can be modified by adding additional levels. These are made by MTH. The price for a 6 story prebuilt for kitbashing is about 70 bucks. You can remove and add levels fairly easily. You also may want to look at downtown deco hydracal kits in O.
With respect to nice large scale buildings that are scratch built take a look here
Another page with how to build larger structures
The second page goes has a section for th ehow to for each building.
With respect to price remember its a volume issue. The space a 1/48 scale building takes is more then double the space of a similar 1/87. I see vendors @ Springfield MA and other large shows that sell suitable kits for kitbashing. Most run in the 100-200 3dollar range for the larger ones.
Don’t let people like Richard bother you, last I looked this is a forum for all scales. If I remember correctly John Armstrong was O scale. I guess he would not belong here either if he was alive.
Bill D
I don’t think Richard was trying to be mean or rude. He was, perhaps a bit too tongue in cheek, trying to make the new guy aware of the fact that Kalmbach has three different model railroading magazines, focusing on different scales/gauges, plus two magazines associated with full size trains, and that there are a grand total of 17 different forums on this website associated with these magazines.
“Garden Railways Magazine” (forums: http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=7) focuses mainly on G gauge trains in various scales (and outdoor layouts in even larger scales/gauges)
“Classic Toy Trains Magazine” (forums: http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=5) focuses mainly on O gauge, S gauge and standard gauge
“Model Railroader Magazine” (forums: http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=8) focus mainly on scale model railroading in N and H0 scale, with the rare foray into other scales.
“Classic Trains Magazine” (forums: http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=6) focus on historic real trains in the era 1920 - 1970
“Trains Magazine” (forums: http://cs.trains.com/TRCCS/forums/default.aspx?GroupID=9) focus on real trains and railroading - both modern news and articles about historic railroading
The fact that Kalmbach has chosen to focus most of it’s O gauge model railroading in Classic Toy Trains M
Buildings Unlimited
http://www.valleymodeltrains.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=1_245&osCsid=sre1dq5f4i45eebioonv8kh6s0
you may want to consider paper kits like Clever Models and ScaleScenes
http://clevermodels.squarespace.com/ http://scalescenes.com/
They can be built as designed, but can be easily modified using a computer program such as: Photo Shop, Paint Shop Pro, or GIMP. (GIMP is a free program)
Here is a link to a search at walthers.com for the O scale MTH buildings in a style similar to the City Classics’s buildings that Bill mentioned above:
Smile,
Stein
Take a look at Ameri-Towne. MB Klein has them among others.
There’s a lot of cross over between the 3-rail and scale side of O (and S for that matter), but a lot of the 3 rail buildings are undersized. For example, I have an MTH Grainery building that’s a little small for O, but perfect for my S scale layout.
Enjoy
Paul
Richard, I disagree. Model Railroader is for scale model railroaders. Classic Toy Trains is for tinplate as it is known (and used to be - real tin!). The fact that so much tinplate/toy trains is or are or were in O scale, or what passes for O scale (very few toy trains are in accurate 1/4 inch scale), is not the point. There are plenty of scale model railroaders in O scale, standard guage and narrow guage, and the magazine for them is Model Railroader, not CTT
Which is not to say that the Classic Toy Trains readers might not have some usable structure ideas for the OP.
Tichy makes a useful assortment of O scale parts such as windows, doors and other details and they also offer them in a sampler box that can be a useful head start to a scratch builder.
Fortunately for the OP, Design Preservation makes much of their popular modular system in O scale and thus it should be possible to build up all those structures he needs. That is what I would investigate if I was in his shoes.
Dave Nelson
Ameri-Town kits are relatively inexpensive and can look pretty good when finished. Lionel made many very affordable plastic kits in the not-too-distant past that are really quite nice. A search of ebay would provide you with hundreds of them for sale.
Due to the popularity of On30, the amount of accessories for O-scale has literally exploded the last couple of years!
I guess it has something to do with the fact that when you get older, it’s much easier to detail in O than HO…
A problem with the Classic Toy Trains magazine / forum is it’s just that - dedicated to toy trains. You probably would find more info and like-minded people over at O Gauge magazine’s website.
http://ogrforum.ogaugerr.com/forums
That magazine covers both 2 and 3 rail O gauge layouts. BTW there are many ‘hi-railers’ now, guys who model 1:48 scale but using three rail track. Some of the best “scale” layouts out there are 3-railers, like Norm Charboneau’s.
Korber Models (www.korbermodels.com) also has O-scale kits. I clicked through their online catalog, though, and saw mostly railroad structures, not city buildings. Still, you might find something you can use, and having other options for kits never hurts.
I model O scale as well. I’d say your best bet would be the recently reopened Korber kits or just doing some searching online. MTH makes some nice prebuilt stuff, but some of the buildings are a little pricey.
Unless you like chatting about your life each day on “The Coffee Pot” thread, Classic Toy Train’s forum is not very useful or relevant.
Hi surix
I have the sneaking suspicion you may have to resort to scratch building.
I suspect the buildings will have a strong oriental feel even if they are western style buildings in the first place.
I don’t see how you can get the right mix and feel to the buildings without scratch building them.
regards John
Someone suggested scalescenes.com as a source. They make high quality “card stock” buildings in OO scale (more accurately they sell you PDF files and instructions). You would have to scale up the print by about 1.78x to get to 1:43 scale. There are a number of contemporary and older style buildings and houses.
I asked ScaleScenes about O gauge, their reply was: If you enlarge the OO version up by 176% then you will end up with O scale. You’ll need to roughly double the recommended card thickness which may require you to print some of the base layers twice. Another alternative would be to use foam core board which is usually available in about 4mm and would be much easier to cut out.
You may also be interested in the Scratchbuilder’s yard section of the website that contains a full range of O scale texture sheets and arches.
Micro-Mark makes textured brick paper in HO and O scale. This would be a reasonable base for scratchbuilding, too.
http://www.micromark.com/aged-factory-brick-paper-4-sheets-ho-scale,9658.html
Scroll down on the page for other options - the “featured” picture is HO, but the rest are below it. Textured paper will have the 3-dimensional aspect of brick that you can’t get from printed images, and it’s cheaper and easier to work with than plastic brick sheets. (And you don’t have to mortar it, either.)
Way to go, gang… [B)] Surix asked a simple question. And he didn’t ask again elsewhere on the forums.
Think next time.