# Plastic vs Wood Buildings



## jimben (Jun 27, 2018)

I do not care for plastic buildings even if painted. Wood looks more realistic to me. Vintage wood buildings for the most part are very detailed too. Not sure about new wood building detail though.


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## CTValleyRR (Jul 26, 2014)

Was there a question in there somewhere?

I would disagree with you about plastic buildings -- well painted, and I don't think there's much, if any difference. But that's a matter of personal opinion.

There are plenty of nicely detailed wooden structure kits out there. Blair Line, BTS, American Model Builders, Laserkit, and Bar Mills, just to name a few manufacturers of them.


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## jimben (Jun 27, 2018)

CTValleyRR said:


> Was there a question in there somewhere?
> 
> I would disagree with you about plastic buildings -- well painted, and I don't think there's much, if any difference. But that's a matter of personal opinion.
> 
> There are plenty of nicely detailed wooden structure kits out there. Blair Line, BTS, American Model Builders, Laserkit, and Bar Mills, just to name a few manufacturers of them.


One house I own after built with a roof has 51 separate details that attach to the house. I doubt any plastic building has that amount of detail.


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## cv_acr (Oct 28, 2011)

jimben said:


> One house I own after built with a roof has 51 separate details that attach to the house. I doubt any plastic building has that amount of detail.


It can if you want it too.

Most of the wood kits are specifically "craftsman" kits, while plastic models will obviously vary between simple and more detailed. You can scratchbuild, kitbash, or add details to plastic structure kits and if well painted and weathered can look quite good as well.

Both plastic and wood kits can build up quite nicely.


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## J.Albert1949 (Feb 3, 2018)

jimben wrote:
_"One house I own after built with a roof has 51 separate details that attach to the house. I doubt any plastic building has that amount of detail."_

Have you taken a good look at the Woodland Scenics line of built-up structures?


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## Stumpy (Mar 19, 2013)

jimben said:


> One house I own after built with a roof has 51 separate details that attach to the house. I doubt any plastic building has that amount of detail.


Counter point: This is my second "not plastic" structure. It's laser-cut wood and paper. In addition to the sheeting, each side of the roof required 24 strips of the paper "shingles". Each window & door was six different pieces (see the sheet there in the background). Does it look good? I think so. Once on the layout will it look any better than plastic structures I've painted/weathered/customized? I don't think so. So for me, "stick building" a structure isn't really worth the extra effort & minute detail unless it's not available in plastic or if it's a focal point of the layout.
.


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## Stumpy (Mar 19, 2013)

Plastic
.
.


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## LostInHoboken (Jun 3, 2017)

*Plastic4Ever!*

Oh, I LOVE plastic buildings for HO! Always have. I guess it’s largely Nostalgia for me, because these are the kits I grew up with when I first started model RR-ing, circa 1964. I’ve never been a grinch for tedious super-detailing, but I think the detailing on most mass-produced kits is just fine and dandy. The brands I grew up with: Faller, Kibri, Vollmer, Pola, etc., are the brands I model to this day - preferably a vintage kit from the era if possible. I think the world of injection plastic models is one of the great postwar phenoms. And as seen in the great pictures above, a good paint job can really bring a plastic structure to life. One of my summer projects is to shoot pix of some of the buildings I’ve finished in the past two years and post them here. I get such a kick out of building a German building kit from the 1950s/1960s, I can’t even tell you. In contrast, I tried a few wooden kits of RR shacks and such I got at a train show awhile back. Left me cold. Plastic 4 Ever!


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## LostInHoboken (Jun 3, 2017)

*Wiad Hollywood Home*

Here’s one, before I put it on the layout:


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## wvgca (Jan 21, 2013)

Plastic gets the vote in most cases, not only is it lower in cost [usually], but quite a bit faster to assemble, CA works wonders ! Weathering is about the same for time ??

I -think- mine is mostly plastic, not much out there for wood kits in the 1890 era, especially in my [low] price range ..


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## JoeSaggese (Aug 17, 2018)

There are a lot of beautiful wood kits out there but I like plastic best.


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## MichaelE (Mar 7, 2018)

Plastic can replicate just about any building material in use. It's hard to get wood to look like brick.


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## GNfan (Jun 3, 2016)

I vote plastic. Looking for N scale doghouses, i came across a kit described as "15 pieces of laser-cut wood" for a structure with a footprint of 9/32" x 7/32". About the size of one of the little green houses from a Monopoly set. Really? Don't hold it between your thumb and forefinger and sneeze.


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## Atlanta (Apr 29, 2019)

I am voting for both and the combination of both.
When building a rural town than all kind of building materials can be used in H0 or larger scales.









Look at this town scenery, all kind of materials had been used, starting by cardstock, paper, wood, plastics of polystyrol polystirene, white metal, sandpaper and anything else.

I hope you will like what you are seeing.

Ya Ingo


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## JoeSaggese (Aug 17, 2018)

Atlanta, I like your town :appl:


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## Guest (Jun 13, 2019)

Ingo, your town looks great. Very nice work. 

I agree with you, both plastic and wood buildings can be used together and look fine.


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## Atlanta (Apr 29, 2019)

Hey Ya'll,









The Depot is built by own fictional Idea with small diameter wooden beams and small from ship building deck plank stripes but furniture blending surfaces can be cutted into small stripes to be used for wood buildings, too. The Watertower has an empty condenced milk can as base, what a friend of mine and me used to make our strong brewed coffee blond.
The spout is black coloured drinking halm. The miniature chains are anchor chains from model ship building suppliers.

We used scale resin buildings from DPM or SmalltownUSA and some other plastic building manufacturers. Woodland Scenics white metal buildings are also added. Alltogether more than three german RR Station buildings used to make this town.

All buildings got lighted interrior in all rooms, three circuits are layed to the building to switch the lights on and or off between night, early morning and evening and day and night time.
Electricity poles are from Rix, Busch and Faller. Telegraph poles are from Faller, too.
Most cars or Vehicles are from Jordan Highway Miniatures or Preiser and Woodland Scenics or IHC.
Layed Track is Roco Code 83 or Peco Code 75.

This module project died allready...it was my first experience in learning model scenery with lot of mistakes of tries and errors.

Ya Ingo


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## lyrics 51 (Mar 9, 2016)

I use both wood and plastic as well as paper, metal, foam and cloth. This warehouse is made of wood and card stock paper. I used my wife's card making stuff to score the paper and hopefully make it look like a metal roof and garage doors. The platform is wood. I also used wood to make the stairs, dock and raft in the lake as well as the street. The cell phone tower is all wood, except for the fence which is brass and cloth. The mountains are foam. The boulder in the middle of the lake is foam and the boulders around the lake are actual rocks. The light on the warehouse is the last LED on a three LED strip. As all of you probably already know, half the fun (or more) is figuring out what to use for scenery. I guess it doesn't matter what you use as long as the end product looks somewhat realistic! Sorry the one picture is on its side!


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