The Old West Structures

Cannonball

More Trains Than Brains
Anybody make good, inexpensive buildings that fall into the "Old West" category? Preferably built up but simple kits would be OK as well.
 

esl1885

New Member
Funny you should ask. I have been considering building some old west era buildings to sell, but just not sure what kind of demand there would be for them.

I have looked for buildings myself, but there is very little, even in kits. There was a guy offering plans, but by the time I finally got around to ordering some, the web site was gone.

Maybe the guys on this forum could give me some ideas of the demand and what sort of price range people would go for. Realizing of course that the quality would have a lot to do with the price.

Anyone have some thoughts.

Sam
 

Cannonball

More Trains Than Brains
Sam, to be honest, I'm looking for cheap and easy. :D

I need about 5 or 6 structures, including a train depot to make up a small, old west town.

I was thinking maybe:

1) sheriff's office and jail
2) saloon/hotel
3) bank
4) blacksmith shop
5) church
6) train depot

Maybe an old one room school.
Of course, you might need a general store in there as well.
 

Cannonball

More Trains Than Brains
Hey CB, how about this. The price sounds ok, and they should be pretty easy.

http://www.erichotz.com/whitewash.html

Loren
That just might fit the bill.... A little flat clearcoat.... hhhhmmmm

Perhaps... If I could read German? :(
Actually, I looked at some of the designs... A little cartoony for what I'm looking for.
 

Jim Krause

Active Member
Cannonball: I've posted this before. Don't know if they are still available but the price is in your range. Cut and Assemble A Western Town. A book of cutout buildings. Author---Edmund V. Gillon Jr. Unfortunately they are HO scale. They could be reduced on a computer. Look Up Dover Publications Inc. New York.
Yep, just checked the publisher's website and they are available for 10.95
 

Cannonball

More Trains Than Brains
Cannonball: I've posted this before. Don't know if they are still available but the price is in your range. Cut and Assemble A Western Town. A book of cutout buildings. Author---Edmund V. Gillon Jr. Unfortunately they are HO scale. They could be reduced on a computer. Look Up Dover Publications Inc. New York.
Yep, just checked the publisher's website and they are available for 10.95

Actually, the ones Nomad posted would work as well if I could figure out how to get the PDF reduced to N scale. The buildings are in HO. I printed off their free saloon model on regular paper and put it together. For just paper, it came out pretty good but would have been better on cardstock.
 

Jim Krause

Active Member
Yeah, Some sort of reinforcement is a necessity. You could glue the paper to cardstock. I've used a spray adhesive and it seems to work well.
 

Mountain Man

Active Member
Those are pretty interesting looking.

I guess I'm just old fashioned, but Old West structures kind of cry out to be made out of wood.
 

nkp174

Active Member
The resin structures look nice.

There are various rules of thumb for using real wood...it seems fairly common to regard O-scale as the cutoff...smaller and real wood doesn't look any better than styrene...larger and real wood looks better. There are those whom love wood regardless...and those whom don't really care. Regardless, $5 a pop for those resin structures is pretty nice.
 

spyder62

New Member
The resin structures look nice.

There are various rules of thumb for using real wood...it seems fairly common to regard O-scale as the cutoff...smaller and real wood doesn't look any better than styrene...larger and real wood looks better. There are those whom love wood regardless...and those whom don't really care. Regardless, $5 a pop for those resin structures is pretty nice.


What???? Don't tell FSM, FOS, Bar Mills, Blair Line and all the builders of Craftsman wood kits in HO and N they have it all wrong and should only do cast resin kits.
rich
 

Mountain Man

Active Member
The resin structures look nice.

There are various rules of thumb for using real wood...it seems fairly common to regard O-scale as the cutoff...smaller and real wood doesn't look any better than styrene...larger and real wood looks better. There are those whom love wood regardless...and those whom don't really care. Regardless, $5 a pop for those resin structures is pretty nice.

Wood structures are commonly constructed in HO scale as well. Doing them in N scale is the real trick. :cool:
 

CCT70

Member
Cannonball: I've posted this before. Don't know if they are still available but the price is in your range. Cut and Assemble A Western Town. A book of cutout buildings. Author---Edmund V. Gillon Jr. Unfortunately they are HO scale. They could be reduced on a computer. Look Up Dover Publications Inc. New York.
Yep, just checked the publisher's website and they are available for 10.95

I bought a couple of copies of that book and had planned at one time to cut them out to use as templates for stripwood and basswood to scratchbuild several wild west buildings for an old west diorama in HO Scale. The problem is, finding HO Scale Old West figures is near impossible, so I shelved the idea for now. Whitewash city though would be even better to use as templates for real wood structures if I could figure out how to scale them to HO scale. I ended up building a full sized, 1:1 scale set for my gunfighter team instead, which put off interest in this project at least for a while. :mrgreen:

Good luck and keep us posted.
 
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