Walthers' cornerstone series industry kits: alternative uses??

[caboose63]

anyone that has built any of walthers' cornerstone series of kits like Red-X cement, ford stamping plant, assembly plant and miranda's bananas, have you used those and other kits for use as other industries? i am thinking of using my Red-X plant for use as perhaps a bean elevator or fertilizer dealer/wholesaler. the assembly plant and stamping plant i am thinking using as plastics plant and either small printer or food distributor /and food manufactuer respectively. miranda's bananas i figure being my line is set in leelanau county it will be fruit packing warehouse.

[tstage]

jrinnorthcountry63,

Go for it! That's the beauty to some of those Walthers kits: The buildings are generic enough that you can easily substitute/reconfigure them for/as a completely different industry - and STILL look believable.

Tom

[AntonioFP45]

These are top notch kits! Easy to assemble and with weathering they look so good.

When you can, post pictures of your results.

Have fun!

[Anonymous]

These kits really lend themselves to kitbashing, expansion and cutting down (e.g., for "flat" or shallow background structures). Putting 2 or even 3 of the same kits together end-to-end can result in a very impressive building, and some of the kits, like the Railway Express Agency building, the Back Shop and the Car Shop are expressly designed for such combinations.

I've seen the Champion Packing Co. kit built as a grocery warehouse, the compressor building for a coal-gas plant and as a box company.

The REA building -- especially when 3 kits are assemble end-to-end -- makes a nice large-city freight house.

[chutton01]

Heck, Walthers themselves, on kits like the Ford Auto Plant Headquarters building, explicitly say the building can be used instead as a school, government building, hospital etc., and provides decals/signs for such alternate usage.
This is hearsay (not heresy), but when Walthers noticed modelers were kitbashing their large warehouses and mills into building flats, they came out with their own background flat kits (consisting of the warehouses back walls, and about 2 inches of side walls) e.g. http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-3160

Edit: Look at this baby planned for introduction later this year - how can you get any more generic? (I'll wait till the retail prices cools down a bit, and snag like three or so)
http://www.walthers.com/exec/productinfo/933-2917

[Anonymous]

chutton01 has a very good point. I'm sure Wally did just as he suggests.

And if you want to do some kitbashing, go to the Wally website to see just how many (!) of Wally's Cornerstone buildings are now unavailable and RETIRED!

[AntonioFP45]

For a large layout, I would love to kitba***he Walthers Back Shop with the Walther's Car Shop and turn it into a large diesel loco servicing terminal.

With these kits joined "back to back", I think this would be a sharp looking shop!