I've been having fun rehabbing old plastic kit-built structures from long-forgotten model show junk tables or long-gone layouts, and this one has been waiting its turn in a corner of the blast furnace complex on my Path Valley Lines HO layout.
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The Machine Shop is one of many European-made small industrial structure kits imported for the U.S. market a variety of familiar companies, with Tyco and IHC (International Hobby Corp.) the two most recent ones. Pola, a German firm, seems to have been the manufacturer.
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It has a small footprint, making it an ideal auxiliary building for the blast furnace complex, where space is at a premium but there is just enough room to shoe-horn in a repair facility next to the blast engine house and the water tank.
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As a product intended - let's face it - for the toy train-to-model railroad transitional segment of our hobby, it is not much more complicated than the old snap-fit Plasticville kits; it's certainly not engineered to retrofit a detailed interior, and the blank space for a big sign above the entrance and large holes for signposts and vents/chimneys cast in the roof have to be dealt with.
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But, I have a bunch of detail parts and scale lumber that have been occupying space for longer, even, than this old structure.
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But, while a detailed interior is definitely in the evolving plan, the appurtenances of an early-twentieth century belt-driven machine shop are not among my collection of stuff. Therefore, I think I'll focus on the shell.
The overall planning process for this project is organic, so I don't know exactly how it will turn out.
First steps:
1) Try, without breaking anything, to remove the windows and door from the walls and remove the clear plastic "glass" from the frames of windows, door, and skylights. Window openings to be filled with MicroClear (probably clear sheet styrene for skylights).
2) Discard the base, with what looks like empty steel beer kegs embedded in mud, and replace with stone foundation footing, maybe not as high off the ground.
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3) I have some research to do on small machine shops ...
Stay tuned,
Vagel
I'll be following although I've given away to other modlers the ones I still had.
This looks like it will be an interesting project, will be following along.
Vagel interesting rebuild; I'll be keeping my eye on your progress.
I'm going to follow along as well. Interesting project you've undertaken.
Count me in. This should be really interesting.
Jerry
Howdy Vagel,
I love kitbashing, and this project looks to be a lot of fun. I like your call to dump the funky base.
Have fun,
mike
Today I started the disassembly process.
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The base didn't survive intact, but it's a discard, anyway. The windows and door are a series of one-piece panels with clear plastic "glass" laminated onto them and then glued into the wall openings. There was some residual base material welded to the bottom of one side wall, which I took care of with a few careful srokes of the miniature miter saw.
By the way, I'm impressed that our friends at Pola actually included brick detail on the backs of the front and rear facades that are visible above the roof. Nice touch.
The trick was to separate the door/window panel assemblies from the interior walls, and then do the same with "glass" laminate without rendering the actual windows and door unusable in the reassembled structure.
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After a tough start I dug out the Xacto No. 17 chisel, became a little bit more carefu, and ended up with the door and all but one window intact enough to be reused. That remaining flash around them will be trimmed to "Grandt Line" standards before they go back into place somewhere down the road.
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After working with Xacto blades (especially the No. 17 chisel) for a little over an hour with no accidents, I decided to call in the dogs and quit while I was ahead.
I'll start the next work session with skylight disassembly and nipping off the guide nubs on the inside corners of the wall units.