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I'm posting this here rather than on the Scenery forum because I think there is enough general interest - the recent thread on good church models, etc.  The Pegasus model system has come up in several threads and I bought several and give my thoughts about them here.  Overall, I am pleased with them as good material for projects where I bash their kits into 1:48 scale.

 

Pegasus makes a set of "Gothic city" kits and building panel kits that can be used to make Gothic cathedrals, Houses of Parliament and other large institutional buildings, or large mansions, in 1:64 or 1:72 scale, as well as models of ruins of bombed out European or ancient buildings (they even make models of buildings that have collapsed). Their target market is mostly war-gamers.  Scale looks to be right at 1/64 - but remember these are kits meant to model cathedrals, etc..  A 1/64 cathedral makes a really big 1:48th church (see below).   I bought two of each of the kits shown below, sufficient to make the two structures I talk and show below.

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The Pegasus system provides modular panels of several types (windowed, solid, doorway), as well as columns, doors, roof sections, flying buttresses, etc., to fit with them.  All are molded of soft plastic that cuts and files well and takes every plastic glue I have tried very nicely.  All the panels, etc., have two fully molded, detailed sides, with subtly different gothic decoration types on each side.  Also, each kit has several sprues of Gargoyles and such with which you can decorate your building to get that final, creepy level of gothic-ness so your Dungeons and Dragons characters feel right at home. 

      For the most part the pieces fit together logically and well.  However, fit and model accuracy is not as good as, say, Ameritown kits.  My kits required a good deal of trimming and fitting, and some gap-filling glue in places, but nothing more than some limited production cast resin models I've received, and quite easy to do. 

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My first Pegasus project was this mansion building front on my layout, where the richest man in the world lives.  I nixed the gargolves and used sheet styrene to cover the slots for this to fit in, etc., and clean up and downplay the "gothic-ness" a bit.  Painted a very light stone gray, it looks quite nice.  This photo below shows part of it but is zoomed in on the front of the building to show how well the size of the panels goes with 1:48 figures. 

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I'm now working a church that will be about 15 by 25 inches footprint.  It will be on the hilltop of my layout's town and its steeples the highest points on my layout.  Here is all I have so far.  I plan to do a scratch built round "Rose" window over the front door of the church but otherwise finish it with Pegasus panels all around.  I will not use the flying buttresses, or the gargoyles, etc.   Painted an almost white stone color, it will look noble and peakful, I think, not horrific or spooky.

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I'd recommend these kits to anyone who is comfortable bashing kits and doesn't mind doing a little trimming and fitting.  You can build a really nice, big, churchs or large old-world institutional buildings (city hall, etc.) with them. 

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Oh wow!  I had no idea about all the other things they make!  I gotta have that Mercury 9 rocket and find a place for it on my layout! 

 

Edit: As nearly always, Amazon had the Mercury 9 rocket, and the When World's Collide rocket, too.  Thinking about that model of the Nautilus from 20,000 Leagues, too.   Wonder if it would fit on a flatcar?

Last edited by Lee Willis

I just wish I'd taken a picture of that church when it was under construction. I was on my way to a meeting when I saw it and just never got around to getting back there with a camera. Here's a shot of it completed that I found online. You'd never know to look at it that it was made of concrete blocks. They must have done some kind of stone facing. 

 

The trip when I saw the church under construction was pretty strange. I was formally presented to the King in a morning suit and top hat. Only time I have ever worn a morning suit and top hat. Somewhere I have a photo of me in the garden of the International Dateline Hotel, surrounded by bougainvillea, wearing the formal rig with aviator shades.

 

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Last edited by Southwest Hiawatha
I'll see what I can do. The slide is somewhere among the 40,000 or so I took during my overseas career, and my slide scanner is not currently set up, but I do have a pretty good idea how to go about finding it - if I can find the time. At the moment, I'm composing lecture notes for a 2-hour seminar on the technology and strategy of nuclear weapons for my class on Tuesday. That may take a while. 
 
Originally Posted by Lee Willis:
Originally Posted by Forrest Jerome:

this

 

"Somewhere I have a photo of me in the garden of the International Dateline Hotel, surrounded by bougainvillea, wearing the formal rig with aviator shades."


must be found.


I agree completely.  I'm not sure the world is ready for that photo, but come on!  We have to see it!

I found these sets a number of years ago. The kits come in three different sets of panels and one set that is all damaged walls and parts. I've bought the 3 sets but not the damaged one. Combine all three sets and you can build and very nice structure. You will have to make your own roofs and details and mine will have a bell tower with Grandt line railings and a real bell.

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In these photos you can see about all the different parts available. The small peaked roof, Rose window and small supports (bell tower) there is also large 'flying butress' parts I am not using on this one. Great stuff!

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And while you're at it, why not put a little MP3 player in the cathedral with a recording of a carillon?
 
Originally Posted by Lee Willis:

A real bell - that is a very nice touch.  You got me thinking: when I complete mine I'm tempted to find nine small brass loco bells and mount them in the bell tower as the Nine Tailors from the Dorothy Sayers mystery - always loved that story and it was, now that I think about that, a very gothic story.

I ordered my Mercury 9 from Amazon and it should be here this week.  I'm worried that it is going to be rather a small (1 foot high) model: I want one about two feet high for my layout.  It is such a great looking 1950s sci-fi type rocket.  Wow!

 

BaltimoreTrainWorks - I think I will pass on the Quasimodo character, but I'll probably add a tiny Lord Peter Wimsey, his assistant, and see if I can't find a Daimler double six to put near the church.

 

Edit: Wow - that took no more than thirty seconds.  Amazon had a 1:43 Daimler double six!

Last edited by Lee Willis

I could see Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, or Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings searching for clues on such premises.  If I could find appropriately sized figures of each, I'd order them in a heartbeat.  (Shoot, maybe even Indiana Jones could be snooping around there, reminiscent of the library or castle scene in The Last Crusade!)

 

Batman would also be appropriate.  I already have a 1:50 (I think it's actually 1:64) scale model of the Batmobile from Batman: The Animated Series that I used on the Christmas village this past year.

 

I hope to include all four of these franchises on my future O gauge layout.

Hmmm, The Mercury 9 looks a bit small tho it is interesting.

I think I'd get an interesting Hi Power model Rocket instead, they come in many sizes.

There is a 1:48 kit of a Saturn V Moon rocket available, but it is pricey and way too tall for a layout unless you have 12 foot ceilings.

There are some well made Sci-Fi type designs out there among the plethora of 3 fins and a nose cone designs.

Now I see Pegasus has a 1:48 Lunar Landing kit that I may get.

I'll have to glue that one to a corner of the roof.  

Originally Posted by AMCDave:

Lee, if you are reworking the building.....not sure what your prototype is like....but note mine is in the shape of a cross like many churches were and still are designed.

I have to fit mine on a 25 x 15 inch square platform where it fills up most of that rectangular footprint, and currently have it planned as a two-spire church.  I can and might revise that though. 

----------------------------------------------

Originally Posted by GCRailways:

I could see Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson, or Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings searching for clues on such premises.  If I could find appropriately sized figures of each, I'd order them in a heartbeat.  (Shoot, maybe even Indiana Jones could be snooping around there, reminiscent of the library or castle scene in The Last Crusade!)

 

Batman would also be appropriate.  I already have a 1:50 (I think it's actually 1:64) scale model of the Batmobile from Batman: The Animated Series that I used on the Christmas village this past year.

 

I hope to include all four of these franchises on my future O gauge layout.

I have/am putting a lot of Hollywood and TV on my layout, including the detective I made up for the Veranda Turbine story posted elsewhere (Trayne Rekk).  I have a scratchbuilt model of the restaurant from the BBC 1 series Pie in the Sky with a tiny figure of Inspector/Chef Crabbe, and Mike Hammer's office on the second floor of one building, and Nero Wolfe's brownstone, 221B Baker Street, and Ellery Queen's apartment building now in my uptown area, and in addition to Lord Peter Wimsey, I plan to have Inspector Frost, Chief Inspector Morse (with his red Jaguar), Inspector George Gently with his Rover, and of course, the all-time best, Inspector Robbie Lewis with Sergeant Cavanaugh interviewing a tweedy Oxford professor (who else could it be?) on the layout, too.  I'd have Poirot, only for some reason my wife hates him and has assured me she will steal the figure when I'm at work if I try!

Last edited by Lee Willis
Mr. Willis: I'd love to see pics your model of 221B Baker Street!
 
Originally Posted by Lee Willis:
I'd have Poirot, only for some reason my wife hates him and has assured me she will steal the figure when I'm at work if I try!

...WHY?... Poirot's one of my most favorite British TV shows (right up there with Doc Martin)!  He'd be perfect standing on a deserted, low-lit station platform, late at night.

 

For some inspiration for everyone, check out these ideas:

http://steampunkrevue.blogspot...ity-concept-art.html

http://www.obsidianportal.com/...under-a-bleeding-sun (I'd do without the creepy birdlike creature in this one.)

http://galleryshooter.com/20-d...-the-railway-station

 

Originally Posted by GCRailways:
Mr. Willis: I'd love to see pics your model of 221B Baker Street!
 
Originally Posted by Lee Willis:
I'd have Poirot, only for some reason my wife hates him and has assured me she will steal the figure when I'm at work if I try!

...WHY?... Poirot's one of my most favorite British TV shows (right up there with Doc Martin)!  He'd be perfect standing on a deserted, low-lit station platform, late at night.

 

For some inspiration for everyone, check out these ideas:

http://steampunkrevue.blogspot...ity-concept-art.html

http://www.obsidianportal.com/...under-a-bleeding-sun (I'd do without the creepy birdlike creature in this one.)

http://galleryshooter.com/20-d...-the-railway-station

 

I've got 221B and Nero's brownstone off the layout at the moment and actually plan to redo 221B more in line with the Jeremy Brett show's version of it: it will be a while before I get them back on - I have to access and built up an area behind their location to complete a section of my country 'Streets road.  I will end up to have one street that has Queen's apartment building, 221B, Nero's brownstone, and then Campion's bottle-street townhouse and the police station next door, all in a row, if slightly compressed to fit, I'll have all the cars and figures there, too (Morse and young Lewis and the red Jag, Lewis and Hathaway and their boring Vauxhall Vectra, Gently and his Rover P5, Lynley and Havers his Jensen Interceptor, Campion and Lug (I have a really good Lug figure!) and his Lagonda 6/80, Wimsey and his Daimler double six, and a couple of others. My own made up character, Trayne Rekk, will be driving Bullit's mustang.

 

GCRailways - my wife says Poirot is too fussy, at least David Suchet's portrayal - and when she doesn't like something, my wife really doesn't like something.  She's okay with Peter Ustinov's or Albert Finney characterizations so I'll do those, but as Murder on the Orient Express.  A couple of years ago I did a sleeping car interior with two scenes that movie but its all inside the car and unfortunately nearly impossible to see unless you hold the car right up to your eye (still, it was fun to do the project).  I'm thinking of modeling the scene from Murder where Albert Finney and the Martin Balsam character are waiting on the platform to board, and Lauren Bacall comes up to board.  Gotta have her and somehow work Sean Connery into it, too!

Originally Posted by Lee Willis:
 

... actually plan to redo 221B more in line with the Jeremy Brett show's version of it...


That's my favorite version; there's a recent series of PC games based heavily on this interpretation of Sherlock Holmes.  I've already played through Sherlock Holmes vs. Jack the Ripper, and Sherlock Holmes: Nemesis.  Although I am not inclined to play them again (plenty of "creep" factor in both), it was nice to be able to walk around through the streets of London and get ideas for the layout.

Yes, very true.  I'm modeling a small town in Colorado in the 1950s.  Not much gothic there, but a church - many were gothic, including the one I was baptized in.  Pegasus works for me as far as building that church . . .

 

BTW folks.  I got the Pegasus When Worlds Collide "space ark" today.  K think the rocket has maybe 8 parts total and is mindless to assemble, but it looks good and precisely out of the movie, about a foot long. 

Originally Posted by boin106:

Sorry...Pegasus doesn't do anything for me.  Maybe if I was modeling a European city it might work.  But for a rural town somewhere between San Francisco and Los Angeles on the Southern Pacific main line in 1952...I don't think they'd work for me.  Way too Gothic for my uses.

And you just hit on one of the best aspects of our hobby......room for all!!!! I've been hitting up the manufactures for more Mission style buildings. I have designed a few myself and will use them on my layout....but there is a category that is not covered very well in O scale.

Originally Posted by Southwest Hiawatha:
And while you're at it, why not put a little MP3 player in the cathedral with a recording of a carillon?
Originally Posted by Lee Willis:
I could record the sound of them right out of the Ian Carmichael PBS Mystery movie.  Now that would be cool.

 

Or you could get some CD's from Cast in Bronze - especially the CD "Bells Only" (the rest of the CD's have other instruments accompanying the carillon) - and have a wide variety of tracks to choose from.  The Christmas CD is nice as well (the other instruments could be explained away as being part of a concert being given in the church).

 

And if you ever get the chance to see Cast in Bronze in person, I highly recommend it.  It is truly a unique musical experience (they play many Rennaissance festivals, including the one outside of Pittsburgh).

 

Andy

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