What do you do for O scale structures

Many choices are out there.  Plasticville and Atlas kits and built ups.  Used kits and Built buildings on EBAY. MTH and Lionel or Kline buildings both current and older models.  Even Dept 56 and Lemax buildings work sometimes.  Swap meets are a great place to find used O scale kits and used layout building cheap.

I think Walthers Cornerstone is due to make a return to the Model Railroad Scene in O scale via Atlas.

There are several of them that I would like to try to acquire.

While I am slowly acquiring structures (Last one was a Roundhouse) I also plan future place for the Mine etc.

Good times are here again.

I find a whole lot more HO buildings, which usually need repair and repaint, in shows,

few kit built O scale ones..just those cited above. The HO ones can be plagiarized (copied) as O scale, as the HO selection of structures and kits is HUGE, exponential!   O scale kits I find mostly at O scale shows...but there are VERY FEW of those..and also on the net.  You can walk through York and Wheaton and other shows, and not see an O scale structure kit. Above note cites some but it kinda has to do with how much individuality you want.  If you build a kit, including one of the above where you SHOULD, you can make changes, colors, move doors and windows, create your own signs, add on lean-tos, etc.  Building a kit or a few of them or modifying (kitbashing)those from sources cited above will make you realize that you CAN scratchbuild whatever you want.  Catch?  Yup..it's time consuming! Plus? Nobody else will have the exact same thing, and personal satisfaction.

Lets not forget forum member Rich833 who recently aquired Korber Models from Just Trains.  Best looking kits in my opinon.

Paul Edgar

I always looked at Plasticville and some others as being a bit out of scale and having that toy like apperance. 

Is there anything in O scale similar to Walthers HO New River Mine?

Any reason why the Ameritowne structures are not mentioned?  There should be enough with those kits, fronts and side panels to make a whole city.

I'm a fan of Bar Mills Models

http://www.barmillsmodels.com/index.php#anc-craftsman

They produce nice, tight fitting, laser-cut wood kits. I built their "Majestic Hardware and Feed" for my Youngstown & Southern Railway.A breeze to do and I love the multiple roof lines.

Google 'Valley Model Trains'.  They carry a bunch of different lines.

Suggest that you check out the source list over on the Scenary & Structures section:

https://ogrforum.com/d...ent/2415514336556990

There's a limited selection of ready to plant structures.

There's quite a few kiits available, BarMills, BTS, AMB, Berkshire Valley, and host of smaller laser cut kit producers.  Takes a little leg work and maybe reading the adverts in a few select magazines,

Scratchbuilding is an option; it may be an investment in time, but you will end up with unique to your layout structures that you created.

Unique models at www.http://sierrawestscalemodels.com/ for O scale. Expensive but well worth it for the result

Pecos River Brass has some nice industrial type of structures. Here's a link to his buildings and structures page. http://www.pecosriverbrass.com/prices/MRS.htm

Travis

Mr. Lally...

Nice model of the Bar Mills feed mill!!  I have that kit, but have photographed and

scratchbuilt a lot of grain elevators...there is a book on Indiana ones that will send

the reader to some "ghost towns" in the midwest, centered by an abandoned elevator, so that project awaits. I don't think there are either books for other states, or a book of national elevators although a Canadian has photoed and produces calendars and other publications of them across N. America.  My kit will be severely kitbashed with a tall elevator to make it more midwestern to western in appearance.

Bar Mills, to me, are northeastern in appearance, but many can be bashed  to fit in anywhere, they offer urban models not common elsewhere, and western saloons look funny down by the tracks on the Boston and Maine.

One has to search a lot of structure makers to find what appeals to them for their region, period, or urban or rural,  that they are modeling (and many in toy trains are not "modeling"...they are recreating a childhood....it would be a lot easier for me to recreate my childhood layout, because there are plenty of Plasticville, and plywood sheets, out there) I could make that happen really fast; this is NOT happening fast. In addition to OGR, I use the Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette for ads for current offered kits, and NEW ONES, and back issues for historical ones that I can look for, or just scratchbuild a similar model from the ad. 

Maybe the grain elevator from AMB would be more mid-west?

http://www.laserkit.com/laserkit.htm

Those dreaded toy train guys sure do ruin it for "real modelers"

You can do a lot with commercially available products - even Plasticville if you're willing to put some work in it. 

Many do, even "toy train" folks.

Back to the subject at hand - Bar Mills makes great kits - not as many really great ones in "O" as in HO, but still some nice stuff. I was in the hobby shop yesterday and saw a wood kit - Branch Line I believe of a very basic trackside structure. A whopping $69.00 for a kit you can build two of for ten dollars in clapboard siding and some stripwood.

You get out what you put in.  

In addition to the SierraWest kits another source of craftsman kits is Stoney Creek Designs. Roger produces one or two kits a year and they are all well done. On his website he maintains an historical list ( photos) of all prior kits. 

Www.stoneycreekdesigns.com

It appears one of my comments was misinterpreted? I could repeat in another language, but what I was saying was that I was building a lot of time consuming

structures and that I could speed things up for me if I constrained myself to recreating my childhood layout of a plywood board and Marx trains.  (it has crossed my mind) Since I have heard O scalers comment that all of our three rail activity has brought stuff to them that they would not have had otherwise, we all benefit.  MTH, others build 2 and 3 rail and serve both interests. The bigger the total market in this scale, the more structures and other stuff that will be made available.  ( I certainly forage in O scale for anything I can apply to my 3 rail)

I built a whole group of SEVERELY kitbashed Plasticville stations, just to see if I

thought they would work for me, and down sized the Lionel Rico kit to that size, but decided they did not fit in with the other O scale kitbuilt and bashed stations I was going to use.  I need to find somebody in S scale to use them. Since I compacted the Rico station, I thought, as another experiment, I might reverse and enlarge a Plasticville station to...say, the size of that largest Marx lithoed station (the one you sometimes see with a crank on top for a sound generator), well, not that large, but to be compatible with my kitbuilt ones and other structures. Have not yet begun that,

but not sure where I would use it.

I did get my hands on one of the Stoney Creek Designs, that of an old mill, which I

enlarged and added flume and water wheel, and I think he or somebody similar has a

Wyoming store I wanted, and there is another store kit, with a diagonal drive through... these both are pricey, so I kitbashed two entirely different , less expensive, store kits into stores with this drive through (one has a tiny garage attachment with a one car showroom for 1940 Plymouths).  I scratchbuilt a 1940 Graham dealer, also with a tiny showroom, but much larger service area, with the same diagonal drive through with gas pumps as the stores. (I remember seeing a lot of these diagonal drive throughs in small towns while growing up..also saw some

really small car dealers, too..the two sons of the prewar Ford dealer in my home

town were cutting hair in what had been the showroom after the war)

I am looking for Stone Mill Models kit of their stone mill, although I scratchbuilt

a second freelanced water mill, in case I never found it.

The point is:  there have been a lot of structure kits made, over time, some for every taste, but some of it is expensive, and a lot of it is hard to find (as are some of the trains). And, if price or availabiltiy is a problem you can build it yourself.