I was paging through Walthers’ monthly sales brochure when I saw the Plastruct Steel Mill Fake Front. I never noticed it in the big, main catalog. I have a little, narrow switching layout only 2 feet wide, and this structure would be great for my industry. But Walthers calls it a “craft” kit.
Has anyone built this kit?
And, just how hard is it to build these craft kits? There is no plastic, its made out of wood? Is every needed part included in these kits, or do you have to do some fabrication on your own?
If craft kit construction is a hobby itself, I just don’t have the time for it right now, and will stick with plastic kits for the time being.
Anybody should be able to handle the Plastruct kits. As their name implies they are plastic - ABS I believe. As such they require a special liquid cement available from Plastruct to bond the parts but it shouldn’t be any harder than any other plastic kit. One good thing about Plsatruct and its glue. It doesn’t mar the surface.
I am not familiar with the kit, however Plastruck kits while not difficult generaly consist of plastic shapes and textured sheets and plans. The modeler cuts them to size and assembles to to make the various building components. For instance instead of a steel roof truss being precast in one or at most a few pieces, the modeler builds it from structural shapes.
I have built a Plastrut gas tank set. It is unfinished… the red white and blue colors are “unintended” and will be changed. The rocks on the bottom are actually woodland senics ballast (medium grey) and I have to chase a few peices sticking here and there.
The kit was built from a bag of major plastic parts. The drawings for assembly were rather crude but eventually after much “study” I was able to understand how things came together.
The black supports from the tanks were two major I beam plastic peices almost a foot long. I used a miter saw to maintain a exact 90 degree cut for the bottom of the tank supports. The arches that support the tanks are already made. The end caps were clear plastic that could be painted over. They were supposed to have gauges on the end, I am simply drawing by hand a gauge on a small disk such as you may see after punching school paper.
The most critical part of the construction for me was the end caps. There were 4 of these and they had some flash around the edges. When test fitted I found I needed some “Putty” from Squadron to fill some holes. Once that was done I had what I thought was a “Hole-free” set of tanks.
Care with your tools is a must you can mar the surface of the materials very easily.
The pipes were really plastic covered wire. THe valves were one peice castings (plastic) that simply “sit” on the wire. Glueing these took some challange. Once every thing was set I let it all sit for a week until I could not smell glue. I used CA from the hobby shop and also Testors Glue for syrene to back it up.
The paint is simply floquil black, caboose red and spray painted British Racing Blue from Testors. It took several coats (Thin coats!!) to cover the plastic properly. I found the plastic material of the kit rather “slippery” but easy to work with.
I have a second Plastruct kit in a bag for the Oil Tanks due to go to a fuel depot dealer someday in the future. As I stated the kit is incomp
It does not seem like you get much refinery (espicially since all of the parts are simple ones that would be fairly inexpensive to make) for the price.
Plastructs core clientele are professional model builders (for industry) . Their kits consist of parts the pros buy from them. Their kit will make an accurate model of a basic refinery although the piping valves etc, are only approximately HO scale and additional details could be added. They used to have the the plans available separately. I don’t know if they still do.