(03/14/23) New Menards Building with Jingle!

Nice!

Awesome!!!

Very nice, I like the older one also! If I had the room I would get one!

Thank you for producing this building. I think its great. I hope you have a lot more new buildings coming and soon.

I was just saying to my dad that you needed to release a Menards store!! I almost sent you for an email to that effect. XD

Thank you!

wish you had added the arched glass mullions in the original.

@mike g. posted:

Very nice, I like the older one also! If I had the room I would get one!

I didn't know there had been an older one.

@Menards posted:

Hi Everyone,

Here is our newest O scale offering.

Your destination for home improvement! The O scale Menards store

Face it, every town needs a home improvement store. Now you can add America’s friendliest store to your railroad.

To be accurate you need MORE customers! Nice structure. 👍

Great job, love it!

@Micro posted:

I didn't know there had been an older one.

The earlier Menards store releases varied, but the one mentioned here was a heavy-resin, animated model that predated Menards train line buildings and was later accompanied by a garden center addition to expand the scene. Here’s the main building in my basement. It plays the same jingle.

@Jim R. posted:

The earlier Menards store releases varied, but the one mentioned here was a heavy-resin, animated model that predated Menards train line buildings and was later accompanied by a garden center addition to expand the scene. Here’s the main building in my basement. It plays the same jingle.

Hey Jim, thanks for posting this, that way I know I am not losing my mind! LOL You know age can play games on you!

I have the "original" Menards building, it came out in 2011. If I remember correctly it was made by Lemax, and the next year a garden center add-on was offered. This was a couple years before Menards actually started making buildings themselves. The store is built more in the style of Christmas village buildings, but is still very realistic. The Menards lettering on the front can be lit solid, or flashing with a number of different lighting effects, and the Menards jingle also plays on a continuous loop (thankfully there's a volume control lol!) There was also an animated shoppers scene where shoppers would rotate in and out of the store - this feature quit working on mine after a while, but other than that the building has worked well over the years. A few different years I took mine with my O gauge set-up at a local train show, and it was a BIG hit with people. Everyone passing by, kids especially, pointed it out! This new version looks awesome.

@DM&E_Bobby posted:

I have the "original" Menards building, it came out in 2011. If I remember correctly it was made by Lemax, and the next year a garden center add-on was offered. This was a couple years before Menards actually started making buildings themselves. The store is built more in the style of Christmas village buildings, but is still very realistic. The Menards lettering on the front can be lit solid, or flashing with a number of different lighting effects, and the Menards jingle also plays on a continuous loop (thankfully there's a volume control lol!) There was also an animateodud shoppers scene where shoppers would rotate in and out of the store - this feature quit working on mine after a while, but other than that the building has worked well over the years. A few different years I took mine with my O gauge set-up at a local train show, and it was a BIG hit with people. Everyone passing by, kids especially, pointed it out! This new version looks awesome.ufactu

No, it wasn't made by Lemax, though Menards was selling the smallish holiday villages from Lemax at that time and Lemax did make an earlier, small Menard Cashway Lumber building and, in 2006, a modern Menards building in the same smaller scale.

The larger resin modern Menards building was, in fact, one of Menards' early production pieces from an unnamed source, making it exclusively for a Menards brand called Enchanted Forest. The resin was thicker and the sculpt was larger than anything Lemax made.

Before Menards switched to MDF handcrafted buildings a few years later, Menards produced similar resin models from this manufacturer, often representing other Menards buildings. Example, the Menards Seed and Feed Building, a truly heavy structure.

great structure for a model rail road

@Jim R. posted:

The earlier Menards store releases varied, but the one mentioned here was a heavy-resin, animated model that predated Menards train line buildings and was later accompanied by a garden center addition to expand the scene. Here’s the main building in my basement. It plays the same jingle.

Thank you!!

They are both very nice buildings!

Can anyone tell me if this is a "porcelain" style building? I have not cared for previous porcelain offerings from Menards, but this one appears "crisper", in terms of details. Unfortunately, if it's porcelain, I'm going to have to pass.  Looks nice in photos, but the people and details of previous offerings were just not what I was looking for, or what I cared for anyway.

Since I work for Lowes, I guess I better keep waiting

@mustang posted:

Can anyone tell me if this is a "porcelain" style building? I have not cared for previous porcelain offerings from Menards, but this one appears "crisper", in terms of details. Unfortunately, if it's porcelain, I'm going to have to pass.  Looks nice in photos, but the people and details of previous offerings were just not what I was looking for, or what I cared for anyway.

Porcelain? You probably mean resin. And since the description says “sculpted,” it likely is resin.

I have the original one and the garden center but have never unboxed them.  Has anything changed in this one?  Probably LED lighting where the old one didn't?  What else?

@towdog posted:

I have the original one and the garden center but have never unboxed them.  Has anything changed in this one?  Probably LED lighting where the old one didn't?  What else?

Completely different. In terms of size, features and architecture. Just compare the pictures above. Pretty obvious.

Picked the new building tonight and unboxed it. It is a sculpted resin building like several of Menards’ most recent releases (such as the barbershop).

Here’s my photo, unlit.

Picked up my new Menards “ Menards Building “ today. It was one of those ship to store deals. Order it online and pick it up at the store for $ 1.40 handling charge.

My building was number 816 out of 1200.

It is actually a pretty neat building. Heavy because of he resin constructions. The lights and interior are great.

My only criticism is that poor Jack the train dog looks like a sickly siamese cat on a leash. Looks like he needs a trip to the vet.

@hclark6345 posted:

...snip... My only criticism is that poor Jack the train dog looks like a sickly Siamese cat on a leash. Looks like he needs a trip to the vet.

All of the Jacks look like they are melting away. I should think the Menards would get a decent looking casting to represent Jack.

Note that I was going to post something similar but just never got up the courage to so do!