The Brick Freight House HO Scale - Test Fitting

I had a chance to really take a good look at this kit from Monster Model and Laserworks and pull the parts out of the box and work my way through the assembly and painting instructions. Translate this to I remembered my paints but left the miniatures I was going to work on at home. However, this is something that I have wanted to do since I got the kit. First thing was to inventory the parts against the listed parts in the assembly instructions. No problems everything there and was either clearly labeled or pretty darn obvious based on the pictures in the instructions. Bonus, everything is there! I actually figured it would all be there so I didn't anticipate any problems. I'm very pleased with the detail on this kit, especially the brickwork. This one will be right up in front of everyone when you are looking at the layout. I think this will be the stand in for Commonwealth Steel  on my version of the "Patch".

Next up step through the instructions, identify the parts for each step and make sure that everything made sense so I wouldn't run into any problems when I had the glue and clamps out for the real assembly. All the major components (the walls and roof) fit together beautifully as you can see in the pictures below.

It was at this point that I did kind of stumble through the Instruction Manual, and this is a pretty minor quibble on my part, but a bit irritating. The Instruction Manual clearly indicates it will be indicate when you should paint certain parts in which case you would refer to the details in the painting and weathering instructions. So far so good. My issue is that the painting and weathering instructions also contain the assembly instructions for a number of the sub assemblies like the windows and concrete loading platform on the rail side of the building. On top of that there are two #5 steps in those instructions, one for assembling and painting the rear platform and another one for painting and weathering the roof. Plus the the instructions in the painting and weathering booklet are not really in order. It would have been much easier for them to match up with the Instruction Manual.

Let me emphasis though that the instructions are well written, clear and include very good pictures of the kit being assembled. I followed through them without any problems. The painting and weathering instructions include some techniques that I haven't tried before and I'm eager to give them a try and see how they work out. I think this kit is going to pretty much fall together, if I had my clamps and wood glue with me I would have started to assemble this one today.

I have some pictures below of the kit "dry-fitted" together and it together very well since it uses a tab and slot construction that is kind of a hallmark of laser cut kits now. I have included a half inch die for my wargaming friends to get a better sense of scale. I did pre-order this kit and received the clerestory for the top but I didn't have that kit with me today.

This is the freight truck side of the building and will be the portion that visitors will be seeing on the "Patch"

 Here we see the long brick side wall and the rail side of the building. This will probably only ever be visible in photographs once its installed on the layout.

Here is a close up shot of the laser etched brickwork. Awesome stuff! The die in the photograph is a standard 1/2" die to give wargamers a sense of scale.