Have you ever noticed that some of the Walthers Cornerstone Background buildings are very close to other Cornerstone full-sized kits? In fact, so close sometimes I think they use some of the same tooling to make both kits. What's your opinion on this?
Case in point:
Centennial Mills:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003160.gif)
Red Wing Milling:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003212.gif)
And another one:
Heritage Furniture factory:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003164.gif)Hardwood funiture:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003232.gif)
Paul,
Well of course they are the same.
Sheldon
Moulds are very expensive to make. If I were a manufacturer, I would want to get as much use out of my expensive moulds as possible.
I did not look up prices, but if forced to make a wild guess, I would guess that the background models cost 2/3 to 3/4 as much as the full model. To reduce costs, you can often buy the full model and assemble it as two background half-models, using a blank piece of styrene as the back of each half-model. As a bonus, it looks like the full models you have shown come with all the neat things on the roof but the background models do not.
I have even gone so far as to take completed models and cut them in half on a band saw.
It's very common to see dies used for several products. Also, many items you see today have been around since I was a kid 50+ years ago. IHC has two former revell kits, 2 stall engine house and mainline station. The engine house had been used by Revell to produce a print shop, I believe.
To go into even more detail about the old Revell kits,
The Bakery, Engine house, and Newspaper office - share the same basic building.
The school house and station - same basic building
The barn and the summer theather - same building
The farm house and the suburban house - same basic building
The caboose yard office and boxcar storage building bodies are actual rolling stock they offered with the added parts of the bases and details.
Some these are more familar these days then others and some have been cloned by others as the dies got passed around, but they all started out in the Revell line along with the interlocking tower set, freight station and a few other.
The same is true of dozens of current kits from Walthers, IHC, Model Power and others.
Sheldon
Of course they are the same, but for different uses. Don't think of them as 'background buildings' but as something you'd put between the track and the wall.
I hate that they quit building that BIG brewery and now have only the back of it as 'Arrowhead Ale" -- but I guess most people just don't want to sequester all of that space to one large industry and would rather do it as a sort of background. Most people DO have space between the track and the wall for a small industry, but many do NOT want a large building to dominate the scene or layout.
I'm looking at the Walther's catalog, called "Modulars", they even had a contest to see various ways of putting the "parts" as they call them together.
Bo
Which background buildings are suitable for a 1950s scene. I need a thin factory for a siding in Basic City, Virginia. (BTW, that was the real name of the town that housed the C&O/N&W union station until it and Waynesboro united under the Waynesboro name. )
Gene
Gene,
Vertually everything in the Wathers line is within your era. The only exception would be those kits based on the blue steel walled auto assembly plant structure. that is more of a 60's-70's and newer building.
Sheldon
Another example:
Walthers sugar refinery:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003092.gif)
Walthers PLant No.4
(http://www.traintrack.net/Images/Walthers/933-3183.bmp)
And the Walthers Built- Ups are often compressed Cornerstone Kits.
Case in point:
Conerstone Clayton County Lumber:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000002911.gif)
Built-Up Drumlin Lumber:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000002844.gif)
Quote from: C.K. Eddlemon on May 17, 2007, 02:11:49 AM
I hate that they quit building that BIG brewery and now have only the back of it as 'Arrowhead Ale" -- but I guess most people just don't want to sequester all of that space to one large industry and would rather do it as a sort of background. Most people DO have space between the track and the wall for a small industry, but many do NOT want a large building to dominate the scene or layout.
Yeah.
Big Brewery:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003024.gif)
Arrowhead Ale:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003193.gif)
Walthers Cannery:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003018.gif)
Walthers Imperial Food products:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003184.gif)
My point exactly about the brewery. For more than 1/3rd the price of the 'Big Brewery" (I think it was called Milwaukee Beer and Ale) you get only one minor wall and two inches depth of the back of the brewery (as Arrowhead Ale).
But folks, seriously -- its no conspiracy. Walthers/Cornerstone is merely offering smaller parts of industries as stand=ins for larger ones because most people just don't have the space.
If you are building a siding, you can get in two- or three small 'foreshortened' industries in the space between the track and the wall, whereas one industry alone might take up nine times the space if modeled as a freestanding compound/campus/plant/whatever.
I really wanted a Millwaukee Beer and Ale, as I needed many of its parts to model a mental hospital. Had to use Custom Model Railroads' even creepier 'American Brewery' and Downtown Deco's Grimm's Funeral Home, along with some Cornerstone modulars and DPN modulars to get my creepy insane asylum underway!
Sheldon,
My question came from looking at the current Walther's catalog and it seemed that all I could find were modern background buildings. Then I went to a small train show in Harrisonburg and found the same thing. I thought that most of them were my era. I'll look again.
Gene
Gene,
Look at some of the background buildings I showed earlier in the post. They'll fit your era.
I've only found 2 background buildings that won't fit the 1950s.
PS- I found another example on the full size kit=background building.
Bud's trucking company:
(http://www.walthers.com/prodimage/0933/09330000003192.gif)
Lakeville warehousing:
(http://www.discounttrainsonline.com/graphics/933/L2917.jpg)
Imust have skipped the correct page on the Walther's catalog. I've ordered Building #4 which should fit well with a DPM Drywell Ink Company - which will be lettered for DuPont when I find a correctly sized DuPont logo and Moser and Son Sauerkraut and Pickle Plant, coming from the P2K Moore Wharehouse. The kraut and pickle factory sign was going to be in German, but I figured that the sign would have changed during World War II, just like my school's alma matre got dropped as it is to the same tune as the German National Anthem.
Gene
Gene,
I Knew you would figure it out, especially after Paul posted photos of most of them.
Interesting points about the German language in our culture. Few people today are aware of how strong the German influence was on our culture before the two world wars. if Queen Victoria had not married a German, we would most likely not have Christmas Trees, for example.
While not old enought to have experianced it, with a name like Stroh, it was a matter of family history to know about that change in our culture.
My ancestors came here doing the German revolution, about 1848, as did many from Germany.
German was almost the stste language in Maryland do to the high German Catholic population that came here in the 1700's.
But we all assimilated, something that is needed now, but not happening.
Sheldon
Sheldon,
The Shenandoah Valley still has a large population of Amish, Mennonites, and Brethern in their various degrees of "assimilation." Especially just south of Harrisonburg, Virginia one may still see horse drawn buggies on the road, often on Sunday at church time. My wife went to school with a large number of Mennonite girls who arrived and departed in typical Mennonite dresses and bonnets, but headed straight for the girls' bathroom and changed for classes. Some of them still speak German at home, apparently.
You are correct in the influence of Germany on the U.S. Go to Covington, Kentucky where some of the streets in the old part of town are actually called "Strassen" and where there is an almost brand new Hofbrauhaus.
Gene
Gene,
That's good to know. When I move to Smith Mountain Lake, I'll be right at home after growing up in Maryland and spending much time in the nearby Amish country of Lancaster Co, PA.
Another strong German area is central Michigan. I have friends in Frankenmuth, MI. In that town, which has played on their German heritage for tourism, vertually all the children go to Lutheran Schools rather than public schools and the town still does its offical business in German.
Sheldon
Smith Mountain Lake is way south and west of the Pennsylvania Dutch area, which is in the Harrisonburg-Staunton region - (Rockingham-Augusta counties). Smith Mountain Lake is mostly Scots-Irish like the rest of the valley.
I spent almost four years in Milwaukee - very German. Back then we started school with the Lord's Prayer, which confused me at first as they used the Lutheran version and I used the Episcopal version.
Gene
Gene,
I understand, but to a rural guy like me, growing up with nothing close together, the distance between Harrisonburg and SML is just a good streach of the legs, or at least no more than a nice afternoon drive.
Yes Milwaukee too, I've been there, nice place.
Prayer? in school? Watch out the PC police will get you talking about that.
Sheldon
Sheldon,
I-81 is not to be taken lightly. It is one of the deadliest highways in the U.S. Mickie and I avoid it whenever possible.
Gene
Two things that would improve the safty of I-81 is for the drivers to slow down about 20 MPH and drive the speed limit. The other thing is to fix it.