As Justin has mentioned in his blog about ‘Tim’s Brewery Scene, 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 another building or item to suit my layout!”.
Over the years, many of you have really blown us away here at SMS HQ with your creativity & fantastic modelling skills.
This in turn helps inspire us to create further products, as well as give us ideas for our own layouts & dioramas too!
Adapting a building kit into another role or purpose helps make your layouts even more unique. Here's one project that was sent to us from John Lamkin back in 2015. It doesn't seem two minutes since it was 2015, time does seem to get faster the older we get, or is it just me? Anyway, I digress, let us get back to John's fantastic kit-bashing project…
When is a pub not a pub? When it's a fire station
In the photo above, John has taken our KX005-OO scale Ale House Pub OO gauge kit & kit-bashed it into a fire station. In case you didn't know the real Red River Inn which the kit is a model of is located near Hayle, Cornwall. I believe (correct me if I'm wrong Justin (not sure now the pub has changed hands - JN)) you may just see our kit proudly sitting behind the bar. you can find out more about the real Red River Inn over on their website here: Red River Inn | Pub and Restaurant in Gwithian, Cornwall (red-river-inn.co.uk)
What we like about this kitbash project, is how John has thought outside the box to give the kit a completely different role to that of a fire station. John has cut three doorway apertures big enough to take Oxford Diecast OO/1:76 scale fire engines & from what we can make out in John's photos s extend the lower ground floor at the back to give enough room to take the fire engines.
Stone or concrete lintels have been added above each doorway which has then been completed with large industrial swing opening doors that he scratch-built. John has also incorporated windows into the doors, very much like an old fire station near me which had similar style doors.
For the yard, John has used a mixture of the cobbled yard that comes with the kit & our concrete hard-standing texture sheet, which is perfect for the fire engines to stand for cleaning and preparation by the fire crews when they aren't attending a call. John has also retained the rear yard of the kit which I think is ideal for fire crew training drills.
For me, John's is one of my favourite kitbashing projects & I'm really pleased John took the time to share his project with the team. As he demonstrates, a bit of thought can add further variety to the buildings on your layout. If you fancy converting our pub kit for a different purpose, maybe an ambulance or police station, you can find out more and order yours here.
Before I finish, John's adapting the pub into a fire station reminds me of an excellent book by John Timpson called ‘Timpson's Adaptables’. In the book, he looks at various buildings in the UK that have been adapted for new roles. A good read & certainly one to help give ideas for changing your layout buildings into new roles.
If you are working on a kit-bashing project, please do send in photos we'd love to see them.
Happy modelling
Iain