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Modified Walthers buildings

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  • Member since
    November 2002
  • From: US
  • 2,455 posts
Posted by wp8thsub on Tuesday, February 23, 2021 10:01 PM

Milton Farm 2

by wp8thsub, on Flickr

The Walthers barn was modified by cutting in some Grandt Line windows, adding a scrtatchbuilt foundation, and scratchbuilding a lean-to from styrene siding and roofing.

DSC01080

by wp8thsub, on Flickr

Ideal Cement Unfinished 3

by wp8thsub, on Flickr

I kitbashed parts of several Walthers kits into this cement plant, including an ADM elevator, along with parts from a New River Mine and a coal flood loader.

Milton Fuel 4

by wp8thsub, on Flickr

The foreground of this scene has tank car unloading platforms modified from Walthers kits.  Behind them is a feed mill using a Walthers kit with a few extra parts, and an annex from a Walthers Interstate Fuel warehouse with a Waltehrs grain conveyor and piping.

Rob Spangler

  • Member since
    February 2021
  • 68 posts
Posted by KitbashOn30 on Tuesday, February 23, 2021 9:00 PM

doctorwayne
I hope that I've shown at least a couple that might inspire you.

Your hope has been fulfilled.

The drywall mud for mortar is a new one to me. Any important fine details of the process which I might not intuitively see, what with having not much used drywall mud in my life?

  • Member since
    January 2004
  • From: Canada, eh?
  • 13,375 posts
Posted by doctorwayne on Tuesday, February 23, 2021 6:52 PM

ndbprr
Anybody have any pictures of modified buildings to show? Either paint or structural differences.

Maybe a few...   (the pictures will enlarge if clicked upon)

Walthers grain elevator, with a scratchbuilt farm supply store and a reworked scale house...

...this one is parts of two kits for Walthers' Front St. Warehouse...

...and the same structure removed...

...with the leftovers used to create the street-side portion of a factory that makes caskets (the rest, not modelled, is in staging on the other side of the backdrop)...

This one is is an industrial supply company (tools, hardware, wire, steel sheet and shapes, etc.) made from parts of two Walthers' George Roberts Printing Plants...

The leftovers from it, plus two kits for what I recall to be a Walthers' Auto Assembly Plant (not sure of the actual name of that kit) went into making Mercury Knitting Mills, a model based on a prototype that would have been a lot bigger if fully modelled like the real one...

This is Bertrams Machine & Tool Manufacturers, built from Walthers Vulcan Manufacturing.  I used both of the long walls on the visible side, while the rear, not normally visible, is simply .060" sheet styrene...

...the Company's office building, in the background, is a much modified version of LifeLike's "Bottling Plant", with the stuff between made-up of some scratchbuilt stuff and a few MDC brick wall sections from their 3-1 kits.

This one is another Walthers kit... (not sure, but might have been a feedmill or farm supply building) ...at least the part with the gambrel roof, but the lower front wall has been cut off, and pushed out, with a scratchbuilt loading platform added...

  The sidewalls on the pushed-out part are Walthers brick sheet material, as is most of the added-on wing, although I believe that the wall with doubledoor is from the unseen side of the structure - that side, like most of my modified structures, is more .060" sheet styrene - I buy it in 4'x8' sheets and have gone through at least 3 or 4 sheets.

This is Walthers "Small Coaling Tower", but because I had limited space for it, I modified it to have only a single coal chute.  I did replace most of the kit's detail parts with similar ones from Tichy, as the latter are much more finely rendered...

...the sandhouse and sanding tower, seen in a view from on-layout, were scratchbuilt...

GERN Industries uses parts from several Walthers kits...

...including their ADM plant with elevators, along with an add-on set of elevators, plus Walthers Red Wing Milling.
The warehouse in the foreground is scratchbuilt, along with the silo support structure, the chemical storage tanks and much of the walls in the background.  All of the walls of the Red Wing kit were used on the visible side of the plant, with plain .060" styrene on the unseen sides...

I built Walthers' REA transfer warehouse for a particular spot on my layout, using, as usual, all of the kit's parts on the visible side of things, but later moved it and decided to also redo it.  Here it is, under re-construction and in its original paint job...

...here it is re-painted...

...and with a treatment of drywall mud for mortar...

...and cleaned-up and re-assembled...

This was, I think, originally Walthers' Reliable Warehouse & Storage, but I modified it, as usual, by using all of the kit's walls on the visible sides.  It's based on a nearby canning factory which processes both fruits and vegetables...

This one is a combination of two Walthers' American Hardware kits...

...with modifications to create a covered loading dock...

Westbound mixed at Lowbanks...

Here's yet another Walthers kit, this one for Greatland Sugar.  As usual, both long walls were used on the visible side (in most cases where this is done, at least one of the wall sections needs to have some material removed from the end which will be attached to the as-is other wall section - this is usually to maintain door and window spacing.  For this kitbash, all that needed to be removed was the pilaster from one end, to allow it to be affixed to the pilaster on the end of the other piece).
Here it is with a coat of orange paint (my favourite for bricks, as it was a very common brick colour in my hometown...

...and with a coat of drywall mud...

...and cleaned-up a bit...

...and mostly completed...

I also built Walthers City Station kit, building it mostly as intended, although I did redo the bricks in a buff colour, similar to that which was common in the particular town for which I chose to name it...

...although I did close-in the original porte-cochere that was on the far end of the kit, changing it into a post-office wing...

I still have a few more Walthers kits to build, along with quite a few DPM structures, and the Atlas kit for Middlesex Manufacturing, the latter which might get some add-ons from both Walthers and DPM.

I hope that I've shown at least a couple that might inspire you.

Wayne

  • Member since
    September 2002
  • 7,474 posts
Modified Walthers buildings
Posted by ndbprr on Tuesday, February 23, 2021 2:59 PM

Have about 15 Walthers building kits to put together.  Anybody have any pictures of modified buildings to show?  Either paint or structural differences.  Thanks

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