Are all HO building Kits alike??? - Model Railroader Magazine

I stopped by to throw some money at my semi-local Train Shop owner, I went there on a mission, and I wanted to try my hand at putting together an HO structure kit.

Well the only real info I had to go on was the pictures on the boxes because I hadn't come to this site to check out reviews of kits prior to having this urge to buy one while I was out.

I was looking for 3 things, A Fire station, A police station or a Gas station, I found a Fire House kit by Life like, paid $13.50 and got 3 old buildings that some one made, did a bad job weathering them and the shop owner was selling them for him at only $1.00 each, I couldn't pass up 3 buildings for 3 bucks, I knew I could repair them and repaint them for my HO layout.

Now the new kit was a different story.

First off I was shocked when I opened the box to find the directions were all on ONE sheet of paper, an "Exploded view" of the Fire house that left a lot of room for guess work since some of the parts numbers were unreadable on the plastic frames.

During the construction I had to remove a lot of "extra" plastic over flow from the parts and nothing fit well, this kit was put out by "Life like"...uhumm, ah, OK!

I don't know about the life like part but it wasn't a horrid model to look at when completed, only too build!

I will have to really want a certain type of building before I try one of Life Likes again.

I had to get real creative with clothes pins and masking tape to brace and hold the parts together while the glue dried I HATE seams at the corners of any buildings and this one had plenty.

On the upside it did have some nice little detail pieces like a mop rack and hose drying rack.

Another thing that drove me up the wall was the base of the building; it was warped so this made it almost impossible to set my walls.

I did get through it and some 4 hours later had a half way decent Fire house but the other 3 buildings that I worked on while waiting for glue to dry on the fire house came out nice, I had to remove the bad weathering job done with paints after that I repaired the window frames, put in shades, redid the roofs and repainted everything back to semi-new.

I'll try posting some pics of them tomorrow after my camera battery recharges over night.

I'd like to know who likes what kits here, I'm hoping they are not all like this companies if so I'll pay the extra for finished buildings (built ups).

I've been building models most of my life, not structures but Cars, planes, boats and so on, I found this fire house to be my worst experience with model building too date.

Any suggestions on what manufacturers have better kits will be much appreciated by me.

Thanks for letting me get this frustration off my chest and I'm wishing all my MRRing Friends and Brothers here a great week end.

Jess red Horse of the "cracked wall" Tribe!

Please visit my Photobucket pics page. I am the King of my Layout, I can build or destroy the entire city on a whim or I can create a whole new city from scratch , it is good too be the King.