Hmm. I’ve been pretty lax for the last three months, not posting progress reports on any structure builds, so I’m a bit behind.
I started this kit in mid September, and have been making slow progress especially during the month of November as I was preparing to move back home to MN from NC.
The particular kit (manufacturered in 1990) is from a company called Fine Scale Miniatures (“FSM”), in business from 1967 until George’s retirement in 2016. From 1967 to 1985, George designed, and manufactured just two new kits each year, and always sold out of them upon initial product announcement (selling upwards of 5,000 copies of each kit). Starting in 1986, George reduced from selling two new kits a year down to one new kit each year, as well as reducing the quantity from 2,000 – 5,000, to less than 1,000 copies per kit, again selling out of them within in a month (or few months) upon announcement. FSM kits, and George Sellios are well known to the model railroading community, and rank as one of the top four or five diorama kit manufacturers (* – see footnote below), with most modelers considering them to be #1.
There are several ways to build FSM kits, the kit manufacturer’s expressed intent is for the modeler to build them, and then place them onto the modeler’s model railroad “layout”, in some sort of diorama. Others, like myself, do not have a layout, and/or not have acquired any diorama making skills yet, and will only build the main buildings. This is what I’ll be doing. You can see an example of this in the first (black and white) photo. Toward the end of this album, you will see the original advertisement from 1990 for this particular kit, and how George himself built it. The kit comes with everything you see in the color advert photo, except for people figures, vehicles, scenery (bushes, foliage, dirt, grass), track, etc. The kit does come with every one of those detail parts you see (vents, chimneys, 55 gallon drums, barrels, pigeons, pallets, crates, etc.). Those detail parts, including most of the windows, and doors, are spun-cast metal. Some of the smaller windows are plastic. You’ll notice that the main structure is composed of both clapboard wood, as well as a “stone” building. The stone building is actually several metal castings as well.
Regarding my progress. I’ve stained, assembled and glued the “stone” walls together, and added some necessary interior support cross “beams”. I’ve added interior bracing to the main wood buildings’ seven wood walls, and stained/painted, and weathered them. One of wood walls painted red – the one without any windows or doors, didn’t need to be painted since it’s a hidden wall, but I did it to continue developing my wall weathering skills (“right…”)
Somewhere in these pics are a couple of photos showing the two main wood buildings (not yet glued together) mocked up, placed next to the main stone building. Further on, you’ll see the mocked up roofs (not yet glued on), which still need to have corrugated panels and/or shingles added. There’s a photo of the stone buliding, and it’s roof, and a tick mark template still attached to the cardboard roof (to be removed later), with tick marks – indicating where I’m to (tediously) place tiny little rafter tails, under the cardboard roof. The two roofs for the wood buildings also require those same rafter tails (in this case, the templates has already been removed since I’ve already transferred the tick marks to the bottom of the cardboard.)
So, you can see, lots, and lots more work still needs to be done. This is my very first “FSM” kit, and I’m taking my time with it. It would be nice to get it done by 12/31, but I’m not holding my breath.
There are two pictures showing a beautiful example of a finished model – these are from the blog of a FB friend of mine (Vilius Bileisis) who built this same kit several years ago.
I’ll try to be more diligent with my updates to my structure building activities.
B.
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- FSM, South River Model Works, FOS Scale Models, Sierra West Scale Models, Bar Mills Scale Models.
