The Little World

Just when you thought the opera was over…

I was idly browsing for OO scale building kits on the internet with the specific of Canadian outline. This sounds like a hiding to nothing, as OO is a British size and most of their card kits and other model supplies are resolutely centred on the their island. When a modeller tries to plop a London Tube station down in Moose Jaw or the Crows Nest Pass it becomes a hard thing to sell.

However.

Either Eatons or the Hudson’s Bay imported Triang train sets and accessories in the late 1950’s and sold them all over Canada – mostly in the Christmas trade. They were, of course, OO. Most of the sets I saw my friends play with were based on roughly North American outlines for the engines and the cars. They had coarse wheel profiles and the Hornby couplers, so the rest of us that had HO sets with NMRA couplers were unable to run their stuff on out track. But they were sturdy, and a lot of them might still exist.

All that was to excuse looking for OO in an HO market. But surprisingly, I found it, and at the very best price I could have asked for…free. There is a firm that supplies downloadable printing sets for a lot of generic North American structures: modelbuildings.org.

They have dozens of plans, but the ones that caught my eye were 8 small houses – just perfect for the married staff quarters of the RCAF base. I already have Nissen huts for the sIngle OR’s. The houses are typical small cheap town dwellings of the 30’s to 50’s period.

Now you get to make them cheaply, but not for free – the download for all 8 is a little over $ 60 AUD. That is the price of one ready-made from the hobby shop, but $ 60 is still a lot to pay in Frugal Week. Fortunately they have several free come-on plans that are there to entice you into spending more.

The download took place after tea yesterday and the store is finished this afternoon – it is just that simple. Glazed windows or delicate laser-cut frames are never going to be in this sort of  free kit, but with a little tizzying-up, the place does become a decent model.

The most intriguing thing is that the straight PDF is OO scale and if you want to render in any other size you just give your printer a percentage alteration to work to. Likewise, when you need to move up to OO from HO, you just multiply dimensions by 103% and it all works.

I shall apply this to make an OO scale copy of my 1:18th model ” Mangina Motors “. I’ve already cut the card for it, so I guess we’re actually into Frugal Fortnight… If I designate a month it’ll be later in the year…perhaps Cheaptember.