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Saturday, February 22, 2014

N-scale railroad scenery buildings review

I was looking for some scenery for my board. Scratch building is good and all, but it is time consuming and the results are not always perfects. To mix and match with my already finished buildings, I purchased a few buildings that looked promising from some brands of japanese n-scale railroad accessories (on ebay).

Prebuilt & ready to use


Some of those buildings are ready to use from the box. Just open the box, pull the building and put it on your gaming table ! Great for those that don't have much time. It is not very expensive either...

Bank (Tomytec) about 9$


I think It would be a small structure rulewise. It is of the roughly same size as the smallest buildings in the starter set. Very easy to put together. Painting is ok, architectural style is matching with the DZC background (columns). Very nice piece of kit overall. It needs assembly but it is very minimal.



Small size office building A (Tomix) a little more than 7$


Clean piece of kit, but it looks like a toy. I will have to paint it one day to match the other buildings, but it could prove difficult with all the windows and details. Game wise it could be difficult to place more than 1 ou 2 infantry bases on the roof. Not bad but far from perfect. The price is fortunately very low.

Small size office building B (Tomix) a little more than 9$


Same as model A, larger, taller, a little more expensive. It looks even more difficult to place infantry bases on the roof as there is a large advertisement structure.



Large office building (Tomix) 22$


This would be game-wise a large structure. It is very tall (more than 20cm). It is very easy to hide a large number of units behind. It is of similar size as the largest building of the starter set and makes a very good replacement. The overall look of the kit is very clean and very nice, maybe less cheap that the smaller kit from the same brand (small offices A & B). Very good but quite expensive.



Buildings on sprue that needs assembly


This buildings came on sprue that needed cutting the parts from the frame, gluing them together, and I still need  to do some painting to consider those finished.

Greemax Maintenance Garage & plant factory (17$ each)


Those are two kits but are very similar. One come with 2 buildings (maintenance garage) and the other with only one building and some accessory sprue (pipes, chimneys....). It took me a few hours to build the 2 kits and all the accessories but I am very pleased with the finished result. The factories looks great and the accessories makes a very nice piece of scenery. The factories would be  "normal structures" game-wise. Infantry bases can stand on the roofs with no trouble at all. My favorite kit !






 House Set (6 houses) Greenmax 15$


 In this box there are 6 houses. Those would be tiny structures game-wise. It is a nice change from the starter set buildings even if I still need to test it in game. What I like the most is that it gives a sense of the scale of the game : a bear APC is almost the size of on of those houses ! Good piece of kit, not sure of its usefulness in the game.

 Housing complex (apartment) Greenmax 14$


For 14$ there are 2 buildings in the box. Those are of the same size as the small buildings from the starter set. They look very nice, with a lot of details. The roofs are perfect for placing infantry, and the shape is good to hide units behind. A good kit.


















4 comments:

  1. Yeah, those Greenmax buildings look very good. Thanks for posting!

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  2. I hate the cardboard building look of the starter game and I resisted getting into DZC for 2 years because of that fact alone, but a couple of people in my club started dressing their scenery a bit and the bug bit me... Ive been buying Japanese N Scale buildings along with my MDF ones since the start.... Great additions to a table! :D

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    Replies
    1. "real" scenery is always an improvement over cardboard one. But it is also a budget...

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