N-scale railroad scenery buildings review 2

I bought some N-scale scenery again from the same ebay japanese seller. After waiting for a while (shipping from Japan can take some time I guess) it has arrived !

Greenmax No.2123 Train Garage (1/150 N scale)

I was really fond of the look of this building when I first saw it. I imagined that it would be easy to build it into 2 separate buildings, but I was somewhat wrong. The junction between the two building may be creating a gap between the roof and the back wall. It is annoying. There is also only one set of doors to close the building, as it is designed initially to store trains and it requires the full length. So it means I had to kitbash another set of doors. Only minor annoyances overall, it is a simple kit after all. I like the look of it.

The gutters are a pain to clean though (but are not necessary).

the doors on the left building are those in the box. I kitbashed the doors on the right one with what was in the box.

Parking Garage Blue (Car Park) - Aoshima 1/150 N scale

When I saw this one, I thought : a huge building, something I currently lack on my table.

I bought it without looking to closely at its dimensions. When it arrived and I saw the huge box, the shadow of a doubt crossed my mind...

Building this piece of scenery took a full 6 to 8 hours. It is very time consuming because of all the decals that goes on the lanes. I don't know if it really necessary at all because obviously most of the levels and those decals are hidden most of the time (it is indeed possible to see them when looking through the gaps at a very short distance however). It was such a pain to place all the decals that I stopped doing it near the end. When I muster again some courage, I will finish it by placing the last decals on the top two floors.

I placed some wrecked cars on the levels of the garage to add some details and overall it looks very good.

I see 3 flaws to this kit (one is specific to DZC)

- maybe too big for regular games, it is indeed way bigger than the biggest towers from the scenery pack from Hawk (12x12cm). Its dimensions are 21x22cm (14cm height). It is however on par with the Hawk resin city hall (19x19cm, 18cm height).

- the decals are too numerous and a pain to place (some even got lost after placing, looks like it need varnish to fix them permanently). I guess it could be almost entirely skipped except for the very last floors that are exposed.

- after assembling, carefully following the instructions, I had a lot of trouble gluing the last wall. Even now there is still a small 1mm gap at one of the corner. It is not a huge flaw but it shows that it is a more complex kit and it needs more care and planning than some others that can be built in a more relaxed way.

I could have bought two of the larger tomix, kato or tomiteck buildings for the price this garage costed me.

Couldn't do better than that even with a lot of time and care. Well, I guess this is not that bad anyway.

Tomytec (Komono 073) Manufacturing Plant B (Cooling Tower )

Typical line of sight blocking scenery. It does looks like plastic but plastic cement wasn't gluing it properly so in the end I used superglue. Very fast assemby, nearly perfect for almost instant use.

Tomytec (Komono 074) Manufacturing Plant C (Spherical Gas tank)

To add a central piece for my industrial wasteland district, I had to get one of these huge tanks. It will make a perfect focal point. The only downside is that it is quite big and it is not a typical building where infantry can enter and hide. But I guess that it can be ruled that infantry can "enter" the gas tank to extract an objective. Obviously they shouldn't be able to hide, so they would only have soft and body cover for protection (machine gun time for the opponent !). I have the idea that it should be easier to search for an objective there than in a typical building, so maybe the objective roll should be easier. I have yet to use it in a real game and test this but it sounds good.

I am well aware that on the craddle worlds, the industrial and ugly looking buildings are supposed to have been build underground. Well, I like the look of the industrial buildings too much to comply fully to the fluff on this particular point.

Downloadable buildings and scenery kits
From another source, I tried 3 kits from Scalescenes.com. Those are downloadable PDFs with instruction to cut and glue the parts together.

For a few £ you can get a PDF for N-scale buildings or scenery kits. It is very similar to the free PDF of the buildings from the Hawkwargames website, or the cardboard version from the 2 players starter set. What is the point then ?

First, there are some scenery other than the regular buildings. There are walls, piers, bridges, industrial buildings... I chose some shipping containers, a gantry crane and a large building.

I won't lie, it is not as easy as it seems on the instructions. First, it requires some cardboard or material of different thickness, ranging from 80g paper to 1mm or even 2mm thick. The problem with cardboard like this is that even if you happen to have some, it is quite difficult to cut with a clean finish. After a few tries, I used mostly 3mm and 5mm foamboard that is very easy to cut, lightweight and sturdy.

The textures are very detailed and very nice. For example, the containers don't really look like carboard scenery. The price of plastic shipping containers is very steep. With these PDF you could build as much stuff as you need.

the gantry crane, still missing the lift engine and most of the moving parts.

there is twice this number of container in the PDF. Something like 6 small ones and 6 large ones, all with different logos and colors.

Some other stuff

I also bought two more items for my secret DZC project number 1, but I will not disclose anything yet as I am at the very beginning of the work on it.

I also bought another box of factory building from greenmax. These are probably my favorite from this range. I finished the previous box I had. Weathering, varnish, windows, decals, everything is done, no more work to do on this one ! Enjoy !