Be honest: are Plasticville structures okay?

Currently on my layout I am using only one Plasticville strusture. It is a switchtower which I painted and put window glazing into about 23 years ago. Most of the rest of my buildings are from MTH or Lionel. It is all just a personal preference. I would reccomend painting ATLEAST the inside of PV structures if you plan on illuminating them at some point.

Cobrabob.

Two views of a modified PV Coaling Tower.  Part of the mods are scratched, part are a kit that used to be available through MicroMark but will soon be available again directly from BVM.

I still have detailing to do, but you get the point.

I like what Jerry Kimble of Atlas O did with his Intermodal Railyard Module! He used the Plasticville Toll booth as the entrance to his intermodal yard!

Here's my Plasticville Station kitbash.

I am in awe at the amazing work you guys have done with your Plasticville kits. 

Palallin: I love that black coal tower! 

prrshorseshoecurve: the PV toll plaza looks like a security gate for the yard - WOW! Brilliant idea!

Dennis B: your PVille station looks better than any of the expensive stations out there! 

While I have babbled on here about kitbashing Plasticville and have not posted

photos, photos of Lionel kit buildings I kitbashed were just published in the just received quarterly  TTOS (Toy Train Operating Society) magazine.  These were in

35mm and turned out great in the magazine.  These Lionel kits were the branchline water tower, one of the stations, and the grain elevator, and photos are in the Winter 2012 "The Bulletin". 

As an update to the round stone based water towers kitbashed

from the Lionel branchline water tank kits, when I did the article, I did not have

at hand the photo where I'd seen such towers.   I have since found that the

towers were at Gunnison, Colorado on the Denver, South Park, and Pacific and

their photo is in the Mallory Hope Ferrel book, "The South Park Line.  They are, with variations as shown in the article,  the standard tower I have elected to use for my layout, to provide a distinctive "signature".   My Plasticville efforts were in an article (which I do not have at hand) some months ago in "The Bulletin".

To add to my comments about kitbashing Lionel and Plasticville kits, another version

of the Lionel #6-12711 water tower kit that I did after the TTOS article was one with

an octagonal base done with the Chooch "foam stone" wall material.  Since the Lionel

stations kit #6-2787 is kind of plain Jane, looking at the photos in the mag suggests using narrower Grandtline windows to angle the bay in more, the bay roof could be

reshaped to follow the angles, another kit would be a great asset for more freight

doors, either side of the building could be shortened, if you need the space, or to create a distinctive station,  and two other kits could be built into an L shape for a crossing junction.  And with more kits that eave trim on the bay could be also applied to the end eaves, which would spark up the appearance.  Freight doors could be

raised in the walls with a modified Plasticville platform added.

I can visualize those water tower kits with square or octangular log bases on a

backwoods or logging road.  Junk box Lionel kits are less common than the Plasticville

ones, but can be found, as mine were.

The above is a kitbash of two plasticville airplane hangers, re-arranged as the Union Station train shed, with the sides of the hanger as the upper hallway. The red brick building at the very top is an HO scale power station, arranged as the union station offices.

The row houses are plasticville, painted and arranged as row housing in an industrial town. The roofing material is flat black hockey tape, that makes for good looking rolls of roof material.

Joe K

I am in full agreement that Plasticville structures have a place on  our layouts.  Several are of decently close to scale, but more important, I really like their designs which capture the style of postwar buildings as well as any I've seen.  Here are some shots of those I've used in building my town of Ash Fork.

First are those I kitbashed for the downtown where I doubled the depth of the stores and reversed two of the sides on the bank so the drive in window was on the "correct" side for me.

The next are of an industry where I used two aircraft hangers.

Here are two homes.

Finally, here is the back of the Ranch House where I added some roof trim, a back porch and raised it a little with a footing.

PeterA, You really captured my imagination w/ this adaptation of Plasticville structures - very, very clever usage. Cool.

Frank

I see Pravda has local delivery.

There used to be an old saying  during the cold war: "There is no Izvestia in Pravda and no Pravda in Izvestia", meaning truth (Pravda) and the Communist Party newspaper

were not a match.

Best,  Mark

Plasticville structures are excellent basic structures and quite collectable. They even have a club, the PCA. Many kits are common in average condition and can be picked up on the cheap. Nicer kits are collectable and command more, then there are the rare colors which are quite pricey. It all depends on what you want to do. If your going to paint them and modify them, I suggest you buy complete kits in a bag instead of original box. These typically command half of a boxed items price. There are a few sellers out on the web you can check out.

One is:  http://plasticvillekitsforsale.webs.com/

If you contact him and ask about unboxed kits he usually has a few stashed away. Or you can pick something out from his web page listings or inquire about a specific building in the color you want.

Gandy

I remember that years ago (back in the mid or late 90's, there was a layout presented in OGR that was all Plasticvile. The hobbyist presented himself as "The Mayor of Plasticville" (if that jogs any memories; it may have been the title of the article.) It was a spectacularly handsome layout, a real homage to the genre. I looked to see if I still had the Run, but no. If anybody finds it (or is the actual "mayor,") that would be very nice to share here, if I may suggest.

Frank

TCA member Bill Nole styles himself as the Mayor of Plasticville. He has written a comprehensive guide on Plasticville structures, which is in color and is quite well done. He posts Youtube videos...search "Plasticvillemayor" ( if I recall correctly.)

Hi, Mark. Sorry for the late reply. I've been to Russia a couple of times, so when I found this Mack truck in that livery (at a diecast shop in KC, back in the '90's), I purchased it. Notice that the Pravda truck is parked outside the Colonial Church, so even the Commies have "seen the light". By the way, Pravda is now a "scandal sheet" a la National Enquirer, which is probably a fitting end to it.

Plasticville has been around for about a zillion years, so they must be doing something right. 

They sure were my buildings-of-choice back when I was a kid, although it wasn't until many years later that I learned what could be done with them with a bit of paint and some added details.

Folks on this thread have demonstrated--very nicely--what can be accomplished with a bit of creativity.

Plasticville Diner:

Harry, That's one of the most authentic, realistic scenes I have ever seen. Congratulations on your many skills. And the Plasticville diner is perfect as you have worked it and placed it. The lightpoles and sign-painter's scaffolding are exactly right, too. The whole atmosphere is believable. Wonderful.

Frank

Terrence,

I'm guessing you're not in the "Plasticville collector" category, but more in the "scratch and dent" operator part of the hobby.  If I'm correct, you may want to look at the Plasticville items as a canvas for O-scale artwork. Bear with me for a minute.

For example, I picked up a pretty beat up looking Plasticville chapel and made it into a unique item using some textured spray paint to achieve a "pink quartz stucco" look.

If you stop by our web site, you can read the details on this project.  If you belonged to LOTS, you would have seen the same info in the June 2011 edtion of The Switcher. 

While it isn't a Plasticville item, the Lionel switch tower kit lends itself to some simple "back of the layout" modeling.  Here's "Railfan Tower" on the back part of our layout.  It's pretty much "out of the box with nothing more than some minor lack of maintenance weathering, "window shades" made from brown lunch bags and grain of wheat interior lighting.

The K-Line buildings lend themselves to being a canvas too.  Here's a work in progress, namely making a K-Line 7-11 store at the far corner of the layout look good without all the bother of super-detailing it.  (It's a work in progress and will eventually be a decent candidate for a magazine article.  I still need to build a shield to hide the interior lighting's wiring)  Notice how we illuminated the exterior 7-11 sign using a cannon light from Model Power.  (My 33 y/o daughter walked in to the train room, pointed at the 7-11 and said, "Dad, I remember all the times you would sit in front of a 7-11 having coffee while I had a soda."  I guess I re-created a scene from her childhood with this building!)

My one caution would be some of the K-Line and Plasticville buildings may be closer to S-scale than O-scale, so you may want to put them towards the center or distant parts of your layout in relation to where people will be standing when viewing the scene.

Just so I understand this correctly, the Bachman O-scale Plasticville snap together kits are actually S-scale?

Thanks.

BTW, great work guys!

To answer the original question I think they are perfect for a traditional layout and plan to use them when I build a small layout for children to run.  When I was little our layout had all Plasticville buildings.  Now I almost only have scale Lionel trains so I am currently using Dept. 56 and plan to add Ameritowne flats.

As for the scale for Plasticville, if you look at the old boxes they say "Scaled for O & S scales."  I think this was done to go after both the Lionel and American Flyer markets at the time with one product line.

I love the plasticville buildings.  As you can see from the photos, they look good as is, or even better painted and weathered.  As you can see there are some incredible modelers on this forum who can turn any biliding into something amazing.  But I think you can have a nice layut of all plasticville buildings right put of the box.  And, you can buy them fairly cheap in a lot of places.   I think the trick to making them really nice is to light them all up and then add a little detail around them.  My brothers and i had a 16'x 16' layout in the 50’s and it was populated with a bunch of plasticville.  It looked like a wonderland to us all lit up.  

Ed

Here is my Plasticville police station, in the town of Beawslaiw, on my layout.  Matt

A delightful scene and a handsome Plasticville building, if you ask me.

Very nice.

Frank M.

I too use some plasticville on the layout.

I have a farm set, the Ice cream shop and the trailer set  in use and several others awaiting details and placement.

Yes, some of them run a bit small, perfect for those back corners and tight spots.

But for the Trailers I much prefer them to MTH's massive ones. Those look entirely too big.

It's all in the perspective and use.

As luck would have it, I've recently been painting some plasticville buildings from my childhood train collection to add some reality.  It is underscale, but with some paint it looks pretty good.

The cathedral makes a nice small country church, the town hall makes a nice pub.

I used the clock tower as a stand alone in the church yard and replaced it with a large chimney.

I'm an O scale 2-railer and I like Plasticville models. In fact there are several of them on my Ironbound RR. Here's one of my favorites which is your basic P'ville Diner with some interesting additions including a full interior with jukeboxes, etc.

~Andy

They're great for kitbashing and when painted up look great. Only problems are they're more S scale than O and light can shine thru walls so you may want to paint insides of walls to make them opaque rather than translucent. Also weathering and painting them does wonders for their asppearance. Since on smaller side, you'll want to be careful ablout placing 1:43 vehicles directly by them.

I have accumulated quite a few Plasticville items through the years.  They do have that "look" that instantly takes me back to the late 50's early 69's.  I usually keep a few up in a small town area I have. They have been altered and painted mostly.  I love the look.  

For those of you who like Plasticville (I have always found it charming) and are going to the TCA Meet this April at York, I recommend a very pleasant gentleman and his son who have a huge display (20'x10') of Plasticville structures for sale, right next to me (WW-05) in the Orange Hall (Toyota), just next to the large open roll-up door on the east end of the building. He always has a good crowd who seem to enjoy the huge variety his makes available for sale. He is an authentic gentleman.

FrankM.

Layout Refinements

Plasticville is easy and farely inexpensive, I also like the

plasticville vehicles. The go perfect on my Marx Southern

51000 autoloader cars. I like the white wheels better than the

original Marx black wheels.

1) first pic lower left corner.

2) second pic behind the Lionel 2065.

3) third pic background.

Popi, I agree - they do look good on the Marx flats.  They give some added variety to what Marx offered, too.  At a recent Greenberg show a dealer had them for $8 each, across the board, regardless of style or color.  Can it be that they're that valuable now?  Or is it because it was a large show?

probably just a large show.

I have paid anywhere from $1

to $5 each, but no more than $5.

My ave is about $2.50 ea.

Thanks Popi.  I appreciate the reinforcement for my shock at the price.

Yep you can do a lot with them.