Adapting A Kit: When is a shop not a shop ? When it’s a pub!

As we keep mentioning, we love seeing how you all use our kits on your layouts & dioramas. We really enjoy seeing how you folks take one of our kits & say, “Hey I could change & adapt that kit into…”.

In this kit adaptation, Stu Hilton has taken one of our low relief shop OO gauge kits and our low relief cottage and turned them into an old-style coaching house-style pub.

Coaching Inns were common from the 17th Century onwards, providing a resting place for travellers and stables for teams of horses. The inns were used by private travellers in their coaches, the public riding stagecoaches between one town and another, and (in England at least) the mail coach.

Coaching Inns are distinctive by having an opening under part of the building, so travellers could alight from coaches without getting wet. Nowadays these passageways often allow access to the car park.

Despite the remarkable changes to the original kits, all Stu has done is added a new section of wall between the two buildings, and moved the shop front across to leave the ‘shop’ itself as an open passageway. The walls are wrapped in TX004-OO brick paper, and he added a new single piece of card for the roof, which he covered in LX410-OO weathered slates. Finishing touches include a traditional pub sign and a half boat full of flowers on top of the old-fashioned shop front.

Read the full ‘How to’ article here.