Be honest: are Plasticville structures okay?

This is 100% Plasticville you can make up your own mind.

I have a few plasticville items and like them.  Some are OK out of the box, others you might want to consider painting.  I have the trailer park and I think I have a blue, silver and hot pink trailer in my set.  I think I sprayed them with a Krylon Matte finish to take some of the plastic look off of them, but the pink one at least could use a new paint job.

You do have to glue them together.  Once they're together though, they look pretty good. Especially for a carpet central (which is what I have).  I'd post some pictures of my buildings, but my camera is in Germany with my dad until he get's home tomorrow.

I have the roadside fruit stand, the trailer park (three trailers and three flags), the union station and the hobo junction set (which brushed with black paint and wiped it off so they look weathered, came out pretty well).

If you're going to add LED's to them, I'd probably consider painting at least the insides black to prevent light from escaping.  I've never lit any of mine up so I don't know how bad they are.  I have a K-Line suburban station (similar to the plasticville station) and it was really bad for light seepage until I painted it.

By and large, Plasticville structures are more toy-like in appearance.  It that is your desired look, then yes they will be OK.  If you going for a more scale appearance, then generally the answer is no.  With some weathering, there may be some buildings that can be made to look good. 

If you are on a tight budget, you might look at cardstock buildings.  My understanding is that they have realistic exteriors but do not cost a lot.

George

Love 'em!

As you can see, I sort of keep my Plasticville in one place, and mix in other makes elsewhere.  Because they're a little less than scale, they look good segregated to the mountaintop. 

Jon 

Here's my kitbashed Plasticville trailer park....

If you're going for a toy train look, Plasticville kits are certainly OK. You can then decide if you want to modify, paint, light, add signs, etc. For cardstock, I'd check Clevermodels.net. Some very realistic structures. Also, the OGR buildings, particularly the fronts are very reasonably priced. You can build sides out of foam board, etc. sprayed the same color as the fronts, to make them into more self standing buildings (rather than background buildings), put the fronts close together and you'll have a main street. Lots of creative solutions to be had for not a lot of $$$. 

Jerrman

I've carefully painted buildings and other Plasticville items, and they look great. Try to get newer ones without boxes for the best prices. Remember, collectors are paying good prices for the vintage stuff. The least expensive are ones that have been glued together, but those are hard to paint.

Terrence, I also use Plasticville on a CC layout, and here's my 2 cents. They look,or seem to be more S scale. They can be spruced up a bit with weathering, and that's actually good time spent learning techiques. I never glue mine together.....after all it's a temporary carpet central and the pieces will go back in the box.

          As for lighting.......the whole structure can GLOW and looks non-realistic, so maybe spray the interior with a paint, or mask it off a bit. I took a thin piece of platic sheet, like from an office supply store, cut a narrow strip like 2 inches wide and formed a short fat tube. Put the LED (dont worry they dont get hot) in the middle on a stand of some sort.The open ended tube diffuses the light very well. I'll say Plasticville does have "credible" detail. But hey!!!!!!!!! add parts..........go kitbash!

They are toy-like and underscale for O Gauge. That's perfectly fine with me. I have about 70 of them, mostly PW US-made buildings. They are especially good for a carpet central layout, and they can be painted and otherwise "upgraded", if that's your desire.

Plasticville can be made to look very good with some paint and weathering as other here have posted. Here is a PV switch tower and water tank I have on my layout.

I have since pulled the base and have used it as a roof top tank

Here is my coaling tower.  It is too small and will eventually get replaced but looks OK for now.

Dave

Dave,

  Nice tower, seems to me that I have seen that before!!

  Jeff

I love Plasticville!

S scale always fits somewhere in O.

Love my plasticville structures from the 50's and 60's but ALL are repainted and detailed.  This is a must on MY layout.  All building and accessories are Plasticville in this farm scene.  You can just add them right out of the box and they still look good.  It's your layout and you build it the way you want to.

Wow, guys!

I never expected to get so many responses to my question about Plasticville structures. All of the photos have truly impressed me, especially the work by those of you who weathered or painted your PV buildings. 

I was most interested in PV stations/platforms and track side structures like the coal station and switch tower. They look great on the trains layouts in the photos. NICE JOB!

Even the photo of the PV mobile homes look good. 

I will hit my LHS (I'm starting to learn the lingo around here - haha!) to see what PV models they carry. One shop in Bay Shore has tons of model kits and they carry a good selection of Lionel and MTH trains. I have always overlooked the models kits. Now I am ready to check them out. There are also two more shops to explore (in West Babylon and in Deer Park).

Thanks again for the sharing all of the Plasticville information and photos. 

Your OGR buddy,

Terrence

Long Island, NY

I did an article for the TTOS periodical on Plasticville kitbashing.  You can buy parts

and loose buildings galore, and dirt cheap,  with glue (I scrape old glue off and use epoxy for permanence), and did detailing and weathering.  I wanted a number of stations that did not LOOK like the Plasticville station, and had a good time cutting and lenghtening various components, (walls, roofs, moving windows and doors around) to come up with a Y shaped one, a two story one, and several others,  BUT I decided that all were, when compared with scale kit built O scale stations, S scale.  I reduced a Lionel Rico station kit down to Plasticville size, also, but decided not go go with them.  At the back of a layout, if trying to gain visual distance, they would work. Since just about everything in this hobby, definitely including empty boxes, is collectible, I was careful to avoid anything that looked mint, boxed or marbled (this last seems collectible in PV).  If buying new...go wild.

Painting with flat colors, or even clear flat, greatly takes the plastic sheen off and

enhances the "realistic" appearance.

I had Plasticville on my childhood layout, and loved it...wanted and would have

bought more...it was an upgrade from cardboard Biltrite...but I have long since been to layout viewings at conventions that were literally acres of Plasticville, and, to me, they all look alike.   And I have read too many MR's since my youth to want to use it out of the box today. (I have thought about doing another set of their stations, this time, 1/4 to 1/3 LARGER!) How about that common Plasticville

station lengthened to match the Lionel Rico kit, and made the correct height,

Grandtline doors and windows installed, etc.  Should be, as were my kitbashed

small ones, worth a couple of double takes.

One Plasticville itme that is close to dead-on accurate is the switch tower. Its copied after a 1906 B&O design for a 12' x 12' signal tower.  The main dfference in the P-ville tower is in how the steps come down from the top level, and the lack of windows on the door side up there. The other fairly accurate P=-ville model is the two track signal bridge.

Here are two P-ville structures I had on my layout.  First is a P-ville suburban station which I altered and oufitted with added details. Would even be better if I replaced the original P-Ville windows and doors. Maybe sometime later ????

Next, the P-Ville tower done in B&O red with black trim (1920s to 1940s). I moved the chimney pipe and added an LP gas tank, indicating an upgrade for the heating system.

It's not always a question of what a thing might be, it's what one can make of it!

Got to use smaller files. These got 'squished,' making them look taller and narrower than they really are!

Hi Terrence, IMHO, Plasticville has become iconic, immediately recognizable for what it is and has been for many years. The buildings are fun and representative of structures seen readily throughout the USA for decades. They do not try to be something they are not. They are Plasticville and insist on being accepted for themselves. However, if you want an adventue in bashing or painting them, you can have a good time of it and get attractive, even amazing, results, as has been shown so well among these replies to your inquiry.

There's a really nice little Plasticvile bank (I believe I see one in the center-ish section of Dusty's wonderful village - the grey structure, photo 1) that seems to easily adapt to many talented hands, imaginations, and layouts in our hobby, for example, which can look well standing on a layout as it is right out of the box, or wonderous when kitbashed in a variety of ways. I feel, Dusty and Kooljock, for example, have used their charm for exactly what they are with positve results to prove their effectiveness.

If as you say, you may use them on a carpet-layout, you may want to affix them w/ a little glue, here-n-there, onto some type of baseplate, esp. if you are not going to glue the pieces/sides together, to keep them from falling apart when moved around, unless you want them totally portable.

In my observation, they are "a look" and have a charm all their own. Once you have a few of them in your hands, you will either "fall for them" or not. They'll grab you or not. Let us know if you get "grabbed." Many of us have been.

Frank

Some of the posters have done really great jobs with the Plasticville buildings they constructed, kitbashed or weathered.  I forgot to mention that I do like the coaling tower and the water tower, which I own.  The switch tower is OK, too.  I know that Neal Schorr was able to make an amazing Pennsy 4-track signal bridge by modifying several Plasticville signal bridges.

George

Plasticville can be made to look very good with some paint and weathering as other here have posted. Here is a PV switch tower ...on my layout.

Wow.Now, here, folks, we have some expert weathering by a master. Al even crafted the marks where a man's hard-sole workboots have hit the stair risers as he ascended the steps, countless times, to the upper level tower room. I mean, I'm tellin' ya', ya' see things on this forum you may have just never thought of before; at least, I didn't, but I sure will remember this li'l fantastic detail!

My hat's off to you, Al, and my cup is in the air - a-salute!

Frank-the-amazed

I combined 4 coaling towers and added some Walthers lights. Still have to build 3 more Grandt Line Chute Gates.

Cesar

Cesar I've never really been a fan of Plasticvilles O gauge coaling tower, I prefer the look of the HO version but yours look great the way you've done them.

Jerry

Thanks Jerry! I didn't like them either, in fact I had these 4 laying around for years until I saw some custom model builder in the orange hall at York with one. I kind of stole a page out of his book

Cesar

Ed, I like that old billboard, I wonder who made it?

Dongan Hills? Could only be you!

Cesar

I have always been reluctant to use Plastic ville except for maybe the trailer park...

However FatBoy's posting of how He combined the towers to make a bigger building gives me pause for further thoughts.

Maybe I am the one with lack of imagination I don't know.

The tower with the steps, I see nothing wrong with that work, maybe the lower door step boards might sag a little in the middle from those muddy boots the signal men having to come and go as they maintained the plant.

I'm glad you asked the question on the scenery forum.  I am a firm believer in that the layout is your layout and should reflect what YOU want and not what a bunch on knit pickers tell you MUST be done.  I love plasticville for a couple of reasons.  The first is of course the bang for the buck, they are certainly inexpensive when purchased new and at train shows you can get a box of them for a few dollars.  The second reason is that this is the scenery forum and we all love to make our model worlds look like the real world within reason.  The Plasticville pieces are great learning tools that can be kitbashed, super detailed or whatever.  The posts above attest to some of what can be done.  Additionaly if you look at detail parts for scratch building you will quickly notice that things like windows and doors can get expensive.  Pick up a couple of basket case PV buildings and walla you have a bunch of detail parts to play with.  I think that the PV models are just terrific.  My 2c!   Russ

You guys are scenery wizards!

I nearly fainted when I saw the pics of some of the stunning detailing, painting and weathering effects done to some of the Plasticville structures. That quadruple multiplex of coal towers is jawdropping! The water tank and signal and switch towers are the absolutely beautiful! 

I am inspired to go out to the LHS tomorrow to search for some P-ville goodies! It is truly incredible what can be achieved when applying one's imagination.

To everyone: great photos and comments!

Thanks,

Terrence

Long Island, NY

I also took this Plasticville crossing gate shanty, added a light, bum and detail parts. Thanks Lee and Terrence!

Cesar

Terrence

Here is one more example:  A modifed Plasticville Large Gas Station

Frank, thank you for the kind words,

most all of my buildings are plasticville or older lionel. painting and weather brings the models to life.

dkdkrd Now that is what I was talking about! Well done, you and your wife have done a great job, PV never looked so good.  Nice use of the airport hangers very clever.  Russ

Wow...I thought I was alone in the world and feeling a lttle bit guilty for kitbashing

PV, with all the emphasis on "keeping it original" in train collecting, and here I was surrounded by a creative and imaginative army!  I now wonder what people have done with some of the rolling stock?  For one, since I favor side door, combine, and

drover cabooses, I completely moved all the walls around on an MTH caboose, to

get a different configuration....(it's in a box somewhere and I can't find it  or its original box, either, to identify it) but I think I turned it into a side door caboose.  It might have been an MTH Civil War one (not a recent project).  (there are old O scale kits on eBay, so you don't have to do this to get different cabooses) but this series of posts make me bet other people have wild creations.  For engines, I converted a Marx 1829 4-6-4 into a 2-8-2 and built a Vanderbilt tender for it utilizing oneof the old Marx tank cars...engine looks and surprise (to me), runs, great..would like to redo the tender body(I made the rear tender truck revolving, so one direction has a Marx tilt fork coupler, and the other a Lionel type operating knuckle so it

can run with either brand of trains, with the out of use coupler under the car

body)  I used O scale brass engine parts for Elesco browmounted water heater and flying pumps.  Have not got around to kitbashing a Marx 2-4-4-2 articulated...keep hoping a commercial one appears, but I suspect somebody has been there and done that.

As you can see Terrence Plasticville Buildings can look prototypical if you are willing to do some painting and weathering. I have a lot of Plasticville Buildings on my layout and everyone has been painted to more realistic colors. 

The newer buildings from Lionel, MTH, and even OGR are usually painted very well and can be used as is but even my higher cost building sometimes get repainted or customized if I don't quite like the look of them.

The short answer to your question is yes, Plasticville Buildings will suit you well as you build your layout and look good on the carpet central too.

Steve Tapper

We have the Plasticville TV station and signal bridge.  They look good just not next to one of the MTH sized buildings that we have. 

Curious if anyone has any good ideas for how to improve the look of the tv station?

This is a great thread, just goes to show what a bit of imagination can do.

The Plasticville cathedral makes a pretty good country church, the tower next door is freestanding from the Town Hall kit.

The Town Hall reversed makes a good Ale house.

And, don't forget OGR's Ameritowne kits and kitbash parts, they are inexpensive and they look great. Here's a couple of shopfronts.