N Scale Cars! Part 3!

And here is Part 3 of a survey of some of the different vehicles on my layout!  Part 2 was posted here last week, and Part 1 is from all the way back in 2009!

As I put together these posts, I've tried to think what makes this topic interesting.  There's probably a lot of factors:  They are colorful and unique little toys, they're relatively cheap, and they represent something we are all rather familiar with!  I think why this is interesting for many folks is that while the selection of vehicles in N Scale is by no means comprehensive or complete, I'm surprised at how much can actually be found out there! So that's really the main purpose of this series of posts: sharing some of the unique, obscure, or otherwise less-well-known brands and vehicles that can work on an N scale layout.

Fleischmann (again)
On my previous post I misidentified an IMU Ford GT as a Fleischmann model, thankfully MK caught it and pointed it out in the comments!  As compensation for that error, I found a couple of other real Fleischmann models...of what, I am not precisely sure.  Anyone know what these are?

Oxford Diecast
Coming from the UK, is a wonderful selection of buses, wagons (as in 'station wagons'), lorries, and various sedans with a distinctly British flavor!  Yes, they are also in that abominable 1:148 scale but as with buildings and other non-rolling stock related items, I find the actual scale differences between 1:148 and 1:160 production to be mostly indistinguishable. 

Anyway, what's great about Oxford Diecast is that they truly are metal, a bit like the Mini-Metals available in the USA in that sense.  Paint, graphics and details are excellent.  And each vehicle has real turning wheels so you can have pretend races between Steve McQueen and Roger Moore!

Unfortunately (and expressed by yet another good point by MK in the comments on this previous post) is the fact that Oxford doesn't really make a whole lot of cars common to the modern era.  Buses? Yes.  Cars? No.  Perplexing given my sense that more and more modellers (particularly in N Gauge as opposed to the larger scales) are more prone to modern era trains, making N Gauge an ideal area for modern vehicles!

Oh yeah, I also have to say I love the packing of the Oxford vehicles. In fact, I love how this little Land Rover was presented that I haven't been willing to open it up to disturb it from its packaging! 
Oh no! Am I becoming a ....gasp!....a collector????

Rietze
Rietze is another European manufacturer who, for whatever reason, seems to have little presence outside of the Continent (on the other hand, Busch, Herpa, Wiking are not unheard of in the US; Rietze is just never seen).  Despite this, Rietze has a decent line up of cars, and in fact a few vehicles that tend towards more contemporary styles like their Ford Transit Van, VW Golf, or their Audi A4's.

I don't have either of those, but I do have a large "Star Liner" tour bus to shuffle some group of annoying tourists through Quinntopia!  The below is a very large, very plastic, modern bus for all your charter needs from our friends at Rietze! Plus the wheels move! Yeah!

Did someone say they needed a bus? Below is just a sampling of a few different VW vans from several manufacturers.  The bus on the right is the Minis version profiled in the last post.  The bus on the far left is a Wiking ambulance version.  The one in the center in the very bold blue and red colors is from Rietze!

Tomix
One thing that hasn't changed in the nearly four years since I first wrote about N scale cars was my affection for Tomix.  And to this day, I must admit, they are still the best at N Scale cars.   Every car has exceptional detail (at least relative to the cost/price!), wheels that turn, windows, features and details painted appropriately, etc... All at the same, and often much less, than you will get from any other manufacturer.

What is also awesome about Tomix is the super-cool way you can purchase a collection of these through one of their "Car Collection" sets (or "truck", "bus", or "trailer" collections) which containt between 16 and 24 vehicles.  Below is the "Car Collection V 13" which contains 24 vehicles (mainly from 4 basic families of vehicles, so you do wind up with some duplicates).

Tomix does an equally impressive job with its truck/trailer sets!   I purchased one of the above mentioned 'collections' several years back and have happily populated the streets of Quinntopia with these vehicles.

Van/Trucks of slight smaller capacity area also available - in a distinctly modern look!

And there is just an amazing amount of diversity...the older, pink station wagon in the back, the yellow cab, and the two smaller cars in front...well, I don't know if I've ever seen any of these models in real life (all Tomix vehicles are created primarily for the Japanese market, so you'll see models, or at least names of models, that may never have seen the light of day outside of Japan).

On the layout, they look absolutely perfect.  Again, this "1:150" scale issue I don't see as a problem.  That could be because some/most of the vehicles are ones I'm not familiar with.  I don't know what exactly the below vehicle is but, who cares? It looks right (almost looks like a Fiat) and the detail and look of the vehicles at this cost are perfect.

Wiking
It seems like Wiking is one of those brands that has been doing the same thing for years and years, and in fact has been making plastic-injected scale car models since the 1950's.  I don't know when they first jumped in N Scale models, but it seems to me like they were one of the first.

The diversity of their catalog can be surprising, for example the two Mercedes Benz vehicles surround a Chevy Malibu!

I tend to be something of a sucker for older style packaging (or "N scale nostalgia"), so these older style trucks with trailers really caught my eye as I think they are quite cool (not sure how old these models and packaging actually are!).  Yikes! Another potential symptom of becoming a 'collector'!

Wiking does have a catalog of both old and new vehicles, with their 'new Beetle' (below) and Passat doing a nice job of providing some contemporary models.  Of course, they make the old Beetle as well!

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Okay, so that about wraps up my 'overview' of N gauge car models as of 2013!  Looking back at my first post in 2009 on this topic, its surprising both how much has NOT changed, and yet, how much there is available to discover!  It makes me wonder what my "N Scale Cars" update in 2017 will look like! Maybe we'll have remote controlled cars without wires, lights and sound?! Nahhh.... Probably not!

Let me know if there are any other major manufacturers that make cars (primarily cars, as I know trucks and other industrial vehicles get into a whole other area) that I missed in eigther these two posts, or the older one from 2009.  I'm sure I'm missing someone!

As always, thanks for reading!

N Scale Cars! Part 2!

Almost four years ago I wrote a blog post on my then collection of N Scale cars*, which just so happens to have been one of the most popular posts on all of Quinntopia!
              * "N Scale" being used loosely here as some of these are from Japan and are a slightly larger 1:150 or from the UK and 1:148 'scale', although I don't see a horrendous difference once on the layout.

So now that its 2013 I thought I would provide an update on some of my N Scale cars with the sole purpose of sharing information, opinions and thoughts about this fun and relatively inexpensive area of the hobby!

In fact, given how inexpensive these little cars are (usually, not always), its easy to assemble a nice little collection fairly easily, so I'll break this post up into two posts!

Also....remember that these cars are REALLY small and the photos of these vehicles are like 50 times larger than what your eye would normally see! So details look bad, tiny fibers look like cables, and bits of dust look like boulders!  Its like Fantastic Voyage all over again!

I.M.U. / Euro Modell
I.M.U. was a small European manufacturer that made an interesting range of vehicles based on European prototypes apparently based off old Wiking molds?  I first got exposed to these models a couple years ago when I bought a lot of used N scale cars off of eBay which include several I.M.U/Euro Modell and Marks cars I haven't seen before.  The problem with identifying these models is that they have no markings at all, so its a bit of a puzzle!  I think the company is now called Euro Modell, however all the packaging I've seen for these models still says I.M.U., so I don't know.

Below is an unidentified (Trabant maybe?) vehicle which may or may not be I.M.U. plus a Citroen DS (the sporty green car!) and a Citroen HY van.

One of the few Volvo's in N scale is also an I.M.U. model; the blue/purple vehicle on left is a Volvo "Buckel", while the vehicle on the right is the unmistakable Citroen 2CV.

But its not just plastic, IMU also makes several Ferrari models in die-cast metal!  Again, there are no markings on the cars, but as I ordered this one new, it came in an official I.M.U. case! 

In general, I.M.U models lack moving wheels and details and casting are fairly crude by today's standards, and window glass (for the most part, the die-cast Ferrari is the exception) doesn't sit flush at all.  They are not particularly cheap either (the die cast ones are fairly pricey

Busch
A definite step up in quality is Busch.  Windshields, finer printing and overall better appearance - although sadly no turning wheels!  Their range seems really focused on emergency or police vehicles, so they seem somewhat limited in terms of how much you could put on your layout (on the other hand, maybe Quinntopia is just the place where every private citizen drives around in their own little emergency vehicle?).

Below are two different Mercedes models, but they have some cool looking Opels, and a 1950 Buick and Chevy Pick Up that I think a lot of folks would be interested in.  Check out some of their current offerings here.

Fleischmann
Taking a bit of a smaller step back we have a couple of sports cars from Fleischmann.  As may not be surprising from the quality of these cars, I suspect they go back to the 1980's or earlier as they are fairly crude.  But you can add a Porsche 911 or a Ford GT to your N scale layout...it'll give all of those people in their emergency vehicles something to chase!

Herpa
One of my favorites lately are these NSW Sport Prinz models from Herpa!  Better known for their small airplane models, not surprisingly Herpa does a really nice, quality job with their cars.

Herpa has also in recent years taken ownership of Roco's famous Mini-Tanks line of plastic military vehicles (which was primarily an HO scale venture, although they had a few 1/160 items).  So you can now get this terrifically named and looking "UniMog" in a Herpa package (along with some Leopard tanks and M113 APC's if you need them).

Kyosho
Need some buses? Needs some buses for Tourists?  Surprisingly, there seems to be a disproportionate number of buses in N Gauge than cars (Check our the offerings from Mini's, Rietze and others), but a couple of my favorites are these die-cast metal and plastic buses from Kyosho from Japan.  If the name Kyosho sounds familiar is because they are probably better known for the Radio Control products than their N gauge models! 

Minis
If your road transportation needs are more from the 1950's-1960's era,  and you don't mind a preponderance of Mercedes and other European vehicles (along with primarily German advertising on the trailer sides), then Minis is a great brand to check out.  They make some really beautiful trucks with trailers as well as other commercial vehicles.

They are not limited to just commercial vehicles, as this really sharp, precise VW van demonstrates!

Marks
Marks is an interesting company.  Again, a focus on European prototypes, they have some of the most expensive cars in N scale available!  The one 'premium' version I have, is another Volvo. Amazingly similar in some aspects to the much cheaper and cruder plastic version from IMU.  Although the photo does not represent it well, the detail and printing on this rally car Volvo are really sharp.  It also cost me too!  I think this one car was the same price as 3 or 4 cars from other manufacturers.

That's if for "Part 2"!  Part 3 is coming! Thanks for reading!

Model Power Kitbash: Triangular Building (WIP / Part 1)

I continue to pluck away at filling in the building gaps in my background behind the passenger terminal.  My approach has been to find unusual facades or kit-bash / scratch-build my own facades for this area of the layout.

Currently I am working on filling the gap in the triangular space you can see in the above photo.  This structure would fill a gap between the bridge and road to the 'country side' (on the left) and the end of the urban area (which is mostly to the right in the above photo).

I am having a bit of an internal debate on the why/how of the actual need for a building in this location as I could just as easily have the street above the passenger terminal merge into the other road.  Yes, that would be the easy thing to do!  Well, if this doesn't work out, that'll likely be what I end up with!  But I like the idea of a building sort of 'blocking' this street as I think it sort of creates a 'bookend' to the urban area while (seemingly) being a realistic issue where city streets and railway tracks don't always result in good plans.

My victim for this kit bash is a Model Power "St Mary's Hospital" that I've been sitting on for years.  This is a ubiquitous, cheap kit that is easy to find in the US, so its a good candidate to play with.

My first decision was to realize that a mere three-story building (as provided) was far too short, so I've decided to make the building a total of 5 or 6 stories by adding all the front and side sections together.  The below photo shows the combined result for the front and sides.  But what to do about the other walls?

As this building will be triangle shaped, and one side won't be visible from nearly any viewing point, I decided to create a semi-fake wall for the back of my triangular building.  You can actually see the final, cut version (on styrene sheet) in the above photo on the right.  Below is the markings and measurements for the windows to match the window spacing of the other floors in the middle of the tedious scoring process to cut the windows out of the styrene.

I did not want this building to be a hospital (really an 19th century hospital looking at the kit!), but not sure what it will be.   Something generic I suppose.  What I did want was a large sign with big letters at the end of the street advertising whatever name of the company inhabits this street.  You've seen these sort of mid-century sign/facade additions to real buildings I'm sure.  Basically an older structure with a clearly mid-century bit of signage covering up parts of the lower floors.

On another sheet of styrene (this sheet a type with small grooves in it that would resemble wood slats in a larger gauge) I marked off the spaces to be cut out where my 'letters' will go (which will also be back lit).

You can see the painted letters (in red on the blue tape) and the clear plastic rectangles they will get attached to on the left in the below photo.  I'll be using "Slater's" letters for the sign letters.  The word to get placed on the sign is "Stern".  Doesn't really mean anything, but seemed ambiguous enough to be just about anything in multiple languages!

After getting all of my black base coats done (for both the interior and exteriors), I'm still debating the right colors for the building, sign, trim, etc...  I want a sort of weathered, older building look.  My first attempt at the building base color was a bit too green and therefore too obnoxious, so I'm going to tone it down a bit with a more buff/tan color.  The trim sections are placed on top of the green to see how they will look together and won't be glued down until I can decide on the right colors!

So that's it for this project! Looking at the photos...wow that's a lot of ugly photos!  Yikes! Well, hopefully the finished project will not only be done soon, but will also be more photogenic when its completed versus these construction photos!