On Fri, Jun 26, 2020 at 07:08 AM, Peter Ness wrote:

Revell – they also made structure kits and (my opinion) to this day have the finest styrene brick wall molding detail around (roundhouse, bakery and print shop kits).  I recall reading about the kit die-maker (or designer?) years ago.  His name was Armitage and he wrote a short booklet on working with styrene which is still available today (newer edition, from PSC)

That would be Al Armitage, the "dean of styrene". With that booklet he singlehandedly changed the course of scratchbuilding (and pattern making) in our hobby. As to the Revell engine house/bakery/print shop, that was cast tooling. The brickwork has so much character because every single one of those scale size bricks was placed in the pattern by hand.

 

 

To keep this within STMFC content; It’s amazing (to me) that “back in the day” some manufacturers really made such a top effort to produce both accurate and detailed freight car kits working with the available technology. The first wood freight car kit I built was a Silver Streak 36’ Wood New Haven box car. The car tuned out very nicely (my opinion) and had I used todays available detail parts (brake wheel, housing, car ends, underbody parts, stirrup steps, NBW castings, etc.) and appropriate wire for grab irons instead of what came with the kit, I think it would still stand up with many of today’s offerings.

The problem I've always had with the old wood craftsman kits was the maker's insistence on using Northeastern scribed wood for the car siding, the stuff with the inch wide gaps for board grooves. The hobby didn't get a decent representation of V groove siding until Evergreen came out with their scribed sheet in the late seventies.

Dennis Storzek