The Box of Forgotten Buildings

From among the last bits and pieces in the Box of Forgotten Buildings comes an O-scale beauty from Plasticville USA. I have absolutely no idea of the original provenance of this piece but its recent history I do know about. During a recent visit to Casa Bairos for a gaming evening, I noticed a table strewn with various buildings and other terrain bits. Vidal had been doing some reorganizing it seemed. I recognized a few of the items as ones I had given to Vidal years before during one of my moves and attendant downsizing. Evidently, I had given him the kits assembled and he had given them a number of sprays of primer. But then they had sat unloved for some time. Now Vidal is a wily cat and he knew I was on a terrain binge of late so having these out in plain sight was clearly a nefarious plan for me to take them home and finish them up. I hesitated... truly I did... for about three seconds.

First up is what originally was a North American-style fire station. I wanted to convert it to a 1940s French petrol station/garage.

The original Plasticville USA kit (although I don't remember ever having the fire engines).

Some simple additions and conversions and voila! The side shed has been scratchbuilt from card and basla and the vintage pump (or some facsimile of) from various bits of plastic and a ballpoint pen.

Also on the Table of Temptation were two small cottages of  unknown origin, probably picked up a model railroading show. I already have one of these in our WWII collection so I thought adding these two would make a nice line of workers' cottages for our industrial area.

I didn't have to spend much time on the painting, as Vidal had already spray-bombed them with various shades. This provided a nice slightly mottled base. The most effort was adding Warbases roof tiles to match our current version of the kit.