Pre-made structure vendors ...

Kerrigan,

Let me suggest something else to you:  scratchbuild your own.

I have gone the full circle on this.  As Frank53 noted (and he does beautiful work by the way), EVERYBODY (or at least a lot of people) have the same buildings on their layouts.  The problem has been complicated over the years by vendors producing nearly identical offerings.  I mean, c'mon, millions of buildings out there and we either get:

• obvious variations on the same basic building or
• same limited offerings

I have discovered that scratchbuilding your own structures is a lot easier than it looks!  Yes, that's right.  Plus I get to reproduce buildings that I have actually seen and know. 

And I think scratchbuilding is actually easier than putting up with some of these so-called craftsman kits - you know, the ones with the warped resin walls and bundle of sticks (from which you have to decide what piece resembles what building component). 

Give it a try.  You might just surprise yourself.

George

Ditto on George's commentary! It's nearly become most model railroad layouts are models of someone else's layout. Creating your own vision of a miniature landscape is much more enjoyable in my view.

Bob

Agreed. While I have several of MTH's buildings, I plan on having more scratchbuilt buildings than commercial ones.

One reason, I can't get what I want. Two story buildings are rare except the corner buildings. What, Corners are 2 stories and the rest are 3 or more???? (except single story stand alone ones)

Pictures of towns say otherwise.

I was hoping to get a couple of nice ones I've seen that I didn't want to build ... we have the older Korber 304 Roundhouse kit (with window and door upgrades) to tackle, after getting a little experience under the belt.

I'll keep waiting to see what happens.

So far I did a kit bridge, more like a scratch-built, which was supposed to take "about a week of evenings ..."  but took me the better part of two months to complete

Not really an experienced kit builder.

Well the approach I'm taking is to populate my layout with cardstock buildings then gradually replace everything with scratch built buildings.  I absolutely dislike the cookie cutter structures currently being offered.  All the structures below are card stock in one form or another.

No one is at the beginning; keep going and get experience - just like anything else - it takes practice.  

Exact same story for scratchbuilding - start at the beginning with simple structures and projects, and work your way to whatever level of complexity gets you what you want.

My mantra when working for a paycheck was, "Ya want anythng done right, do it yourself!"  There are several threads running on here discussing this subject...and all

including this one are good advice.  I have one severely kitbashed MTH building, bought to kitbash, which a number of others have also kitbashed and posted their photos on here, and a number of Plasticville stations, all rendered as close to unrecognizable as possible, with none screaming, "Me, too!!"  Otherewise, kitbashed

or scratchbuilt.