Something I noticed about Walthers Cornerstone background buildings

[Paul M.]

Have you ever noticed that some of the Walthers Cornerstone Background buildings are very close to other Cornerstone full-sized kits? In fact, so close sometimes I think they use some of the same tooling to make both kits. What's your opinion on this?

Case in point:

Centennial Mills:

Red Wing Milling:

And another one:

Heritage Furniture factory:
Hardwood funiture:

[Atlantic Central]

Paul,

Well of course they are the same.

Sheldon

[Jim Banner]

Moulds are very expensive to make.  If I were a manufacturer, I would want to get as much use out of my expensive moulds as possible.

I did not look up prices, but if forced to make a wild guess, I would guess that the background models cost 2/3 to 3/4 as much as the full model.  To reduce costs, you can often buy the full model and assemble it as two background half-models, using a blank piece of styrene as the back of each half-model.  As a bonus, it looks like the full models you have shown come with all the neat things on the roof but the background models do not.

I have even gone so far as to take completed models and cut them in half on a band saw. 

[pdlethbridge]

It's very common to see dies used for several products. Also, many items you see today have been around since I was a kid 50+ years ago. IHC has two former revell kits, 2 stall engine house and mainline station. The engine house had been used by Revell to produce a print shop, I believe.

[Atlantic Central]

To go into even more detail about the old Revell kits,

The Bakery, Engine house, and Newspaper office - share the same basic building.

The school house and station - same basic building

The barn and the summer theather - same building

The farm house and the suburban house - same basic building

The caboose yard office and boxcar storage building bodies are actual rolling stock they offered with the added parts of the bases and details.

Some these are more familar these days then others and some have been cloned by others as the dies got passed around, but they all started out in the Revell line along with the interlocking tower set, freight station and a few other.

The same is true of dozens of current kits from Walthers, IHC, Model Power and others.

Sheldon

[C.K. Eddlemon]

Of course they are the same, but for different uses.  Don't think of them as 'background buildings' but as something you'd put between the track and the wall. 

I hate that they quit building that BIG brewery and now have only the back of it as 'Arrowhead Ale" -- but I guess most people just don't want to sequester all of that space to one large industry and would rather do it as a sort of background.  Most people DO have space between the track and the wall for a small industry, but many do NOT want a large building to dominate the scene or layout.

[Bojangle]

I'm looking at the Walther's catalog, called "Modulars", they even had a contest to see various ways of putting the "parts" as they call them together.
Bo

[SteamGene]

Which background buildings are suitable for a 1950s scene.  I need a thin factory for a siding in Basic City, Virginia.  (BTW, that was the real name of the town that housed the C&O/N&W union station until it and Waynesboro united under the Waynesboro name. )
Gene

[Atlantic Central]

Gene,

Vertually everything in the Wathers line is within your era. The only exception would be those kits based on the blue steel walled auto assembly plant structure. that is more of a 60's-70's and newer building.

Sheldon

[Paul M.]

Another example:

Walthers sugar refinery:



Walthers PLant No.4

[Paul M.]

And the Walthers Built- Ups are often compressed Cornerstone Kits.

Case in point:

Conerstone Clayton County Lumber:


Built-Up Drumlin Lumber:

[Paul M.]

I hate that they quit building that BIG brewery and now have only the back of it as 'Arrowhead Ale" -- but I guess most people just don't want to sequester all of that space to one large industry and would rather do it as a sort of background.  Most people DO have space between the track and the wall for a small industry, but many do NOT want a large building to dominate the scene or layout.

Yeah.

Big Brewery:

Arrowhead Ale:

[Paul M.]

Walthers Cannery:


Walthers Imperial Food products:

[C.K. Eddlemon]

My point exactly about the brewery. For more than 1/3rd the price of the 'Big Brewery" (I think it was called Milwaukee Beer and Ale) you get only one minor wall and two inches depth of the back of the brewery (as Arrowhead Ale).

But folks, seriously -- its no conspiracy.  Walthers/Cornerstone is merely offering smaller parts of industries as stand=ins for larger ones because most people just don't have the space.

If you are building a siding, you can get in two- or three small 'foreshortened' industries in the space between the track and the wall, whereas one industry alone might take up nine times the space if modeled as a freestanding compound/campus/plant/whatever.

I really wanted a Millwaukee Beer and Ale, as I needed many of its parts to model a mental hospital. Had to use Custom Model Railroads' even creepier 'American Brewery' and Downtown Deco's Grimm's Funeral Home, along with some Cornerstone modulars and DPN modulars to get my creepy insane asylum underway!

[SteamGene]

Sheldon,
My question came from looking at the current Walther's catalog and it seemed that all I could find were modern background buildings.  Then I went to a small train show in Harrisonburg and found the same thing.  I thought that most of them were my era.  I'll look again.
Gene