Kibri, Faller and Vollmer Buildings

It's a done deal that a second larger German layout will be made and I need some advice about mixing Vollmer, Faller and Kibri buildings together in various scenes - BEFORE I start buying kits. I'll be using mostly domestic, some commercial buildings, a train station, but no industrial buildings.

In the opinions of those who have worked with these kits, will the differences in kit manufacturers be noticable? I like photographing my work as well as making videos of it, so I need to know if I can mix the three manufacturers' buildings and still get realistic scenes.

Also, I'm going to be grouping buildings from different regions together in certain scenes. How silly is this going to look to viewers? I need really honest answers here so I don't end up buying things I can't use.

TIA

I have mixed Kibri, Faller and Vollmer buildings for decades - oh, just thought it out and I have been doing "this" for just shy of five decades. The three companies compete to be as authentic as possible and as a result, they are, with rare exception, close in style and coloring.
As to mixing, by definition we are, when we model, playing with reality - just think of how much track we put in what in real life would be a couple of city blocks, so, go ahead, do what you want - and most importantly, enjoy the hobby!
Ralph

Don't know which manufacturer, but one uses separate parts to simulate half timbers, the other stickers....the separate parts are better. Also my wife strongly prefers Faller in terms of fit/quality. In all cases, in my opinion, you should be ready to paint. Even though the kits are sometimes molded in the right colors, they look way better painted.

I live not far from a place in Germany called Hessenpark. It is a group of several buildings that were collected all over the State of Hessen. You see, in Germany, if a building has historical or cultural significance, it is protected by law. Those half timber houses you like, if you have a real one, you are limited on how you can fix the outside. They are supposed to be preserved as close to original as possible.
Hessenpark has a collection of different buildings grouped into villages that represent different regions of the state, as there are some differences. Some of these buildings were kind of "rescued" as they were in the way of construction or was in need of rescuing. They were taken apart and moved to Hessenpark and reconstructed. they have diffent things like the little general store, and blacksmiths and barns and animals. Kind of like Willamsburg. Coolest thing is the big windmill (not just found in Holland)
There are a couple of these parks in Germnay and I was in one this year in Belgium.
Because of fires,floods,wars,and modernization, there is quite a mix of different buildings together in Germany. Our friends in the north and east, as was pointed out in another post, have nice brick houses, but they can be found in my part of Germany too. Thatched roofs would be found WAY up north usually, but I believe there is some in Hessenpark. Down south you find a lot of the half timber houses.
Half the fun of doing model railroading is research. Id go to the library and find some nice picture books of Germany, and compare what the model companies have in their catalogs. I always thought Germany model railroad houses looked toylike when I was in the US, but they really do look toyike in real life!
Andy is right about the stickers and the painting. I myself like some of the newer Kibi buildings as they go together well and are easy to kitbash. A plus for Kibri in my book is their boss actually goes to Z events, and their fast replacement for a defective part.

Another source of information, photos and inspiration would be tourist and town or city websites. Most German cities and regions have one.

The kits mentioned are good, but for my taste some of them are a bit twee (especially those that represent Bavaria). That mightn't worry you, or maybe you can do something about it.

Hello Beverly,

I mix all three manufacturers on my layout. The main reason is that you get more different buildings this way. If you take a close look to the programm of each manfacturer you will see that they use the same molds for different kits. Vollmers hounted house is the same as the firestation from Vollmer which is now also sold by Maerklin. They just changed the heigh of the tower. Faller has a line of buildings too that use the same molds. It is a station, a freight shed, a loco shed, and a factory. Only the amount of the parts and some small details differ from one to another kit. The same goes for the small houses from Faller.

In a way they do the kitbash for you by changeing small details and colours.

One manufacturer has the sides in plain plastic and then he adds different "stickers" on the sides to get another look for the houses. Actually it looks better then it sounds.

Most of the houses made from all three manufacturers are more for the southern parts of Germany, but as Kelley wrote this is getting mixed up lately more and more. So you can't be to wrong when you mix them up.

What you won't see so much here ist that there is a whole quarter with all the same houses. At least if you take those "Einfamilienhäuser" single family homes. My childhood home was a single family house, and there were 11 houses of the same type in one row. But then the first and the last were build in a different direction. And every house had another type of add on since they were build in 1935. It is different with houses with more units for more familys. Those are often standing in longer rows, and in more streets in a quarter. But then not as you might have seen it in pictures from miningtowns in England.

About the halftimber houses that uses seperate plastic halftimber parts for the walls. Those houses offer the option to leave the halftimber part away, and thus make a different look for the house.
Besides then you can use the halftimber parts to make a barn or something. This is made from some leftover parts from a house, a white card board for the walls and a piece of red card board as a roof. At the bottom my wife just applied some glue, and just did hold the house into a pot with sand. This made for a look like the stone foundations you often find in those barns over here:



About the thatched roofs. As Kelley wrote they are more used in the northern part of Germany, but also at the Lake Constance (or Bodensee in German) you will find those houses. If there is a lake with a useable growth of Phragmites then you will find houses with thatced roofs. Even so that today most of the reed used in Germany for roofs is comming from Hungary.

I look more at the building than who makes it. In the US, I may be used to the same kit appearing at times under different vendors. Heljan is another kit maker I have seen sold by Walthers, Concor, Bachmann, Atlas,etc. Very often the only difference is the name on the box & the decals or stickers inside.

With care, Kibri, Faller & Vollmer make very nice kits.

Thank you all for the great information

I am learning so much on this board about other countries, kit bashing, and the kindness of those who have gone before me.


Ralph,

Thanks for the advice to take it slow. That's pretty much how I've been working in the hobby so far. I began work on the BAZ #1 Half Timbered House today. I got as far as painting all the little pieces, but I broke one of the windows trying to remove the little bits still stuck between the mullions I'll have to hide that window somewhere and use painter's tape to keep it together while I work with it so the damage doesn't get worse. The size of everything makes me take my time, that's for sure!

Andy,

Thanks for the advice about painting the buildings. I might not have thought of that seeing how the buildings are made of coloured plastic.

Kelley,

Thanks for all the information on German houses and historical parks. I think every country has them. We have one in our city called Fort Edmonton Park . To tell the truth, I've never been there and I've lived here all my life It has buildings that have been moved from their original locations to the park and rebuilt in "streets" that have the same aged buildings. There is one grain elevator left in the city that we drive by once in awhile. I remember it from when I was a child and we had to pass it when we took one particular route to downtown. Grain elevators have been disappearing from the Canadian prairie landscape for years now. I hope when this last one comes down that it gets put in the park.

Ausman,

What the heck does "twee" mean??

The trains I've been looking at and buying are from Epochs I and II in Bavaria, Baden-Wurttemberg, as well as the Rheingold Express. Anybody who knows their trains might look at my larger layout critically, but someone said it was my layout and I can do what I want. I do want to show some distinct time and place, so I guess it will be southern Germany in the earlier steam eras.

ULie,

Thank you for the great ideas for kit bashing and for the photo of your scratch built house.

I have an idea I need to test first, though I think it's going to work very well. I see that the sand on your house isn't very even and I think it would be very difficult to get totally even with glue. I've got some "extra sticky" double sided tape that I'm going to test for use with sand for houses and with 2-3 mm pebbles for a arched and curved stone bridge to go on my cake layout. This double sided tape is generally used by people who "scrapbook" which is a hobby for handmaking pages for a binder-type book that contains photographs and momentos. This hobby is popular in N. America and probably elsewhere, though I don't do it myself. The tape has extra thick sticky stuff compared to ordinary double sided tape and I think sand in particular would stick to it very well. It is also pH neutral and shouldn't turn colour with age. The only trouble working with it is that it's so sticky it can gum up your cutting utensil quite easily. I keep Goo-Gone handy to clean my knife, blade or scissors, or even a rotary cutter (used in quiltmaking to cut fabric very quickly).

I also appreciate the lessons in German history and social geography as well as your personal perspective as a person from a country very different from my own. While I Google just about everything to do with German trains and various states and time periods, there's nothing like hearing from someone who actually lives in the place I'm researching.

Dictionary.com defines twee as "affectedly dainty or quaint". It says the word mainly has British use, but it's also used in NZ and here in Australia.

Southern Germany has lots in the way of natural beauty and the villages, towns and cities are charming, but I feel that the kit makers have misrepresented the essence of the area in an "affectedly dainty and quaint" way.

On my own new layout, to be called Rheissen (a mixture of Rheine and Meissen, a small city near Dresden), will mostly have trains from Era 3, with some Era 2 "survivors" and some Era 4 "prototypes", selected on the basis of what I like (including an ICE 1).

By the way, an interesting little modelling challenge will be to include the firewood stacked against the outside walls of village houses (it's a year round thing, not just winter - well, I saw it in spring).

Wossie? East and West Germany combined!! I have started stacking wood on my American cabin. The secret is a pile carved out of a solid piece of balsa, with the edges kind of weathered and some extra loose pieces thrown on.
When you have that then you will have as the Germans say "Holz vor die Hütte", which has a double meaning, but both will keep you warm on those long cold German nights.

@Kelley:

Kelley wrote:

"Holz vor die Hütte", which has a double meaning, but both will keep you warm on those long cold German nights.

well now... ...we want to hear the second meaning...

@Gary:
Gary wrote:

firewood stacked against the outside walls of village houses (it's a year round thing, not just winter - well, I saw it in spring).

That's because the wood warms best if it is stored for about 2 years. So you always have about three years of fire wood before the winter comes...

We had wood piled up against the back of the house we used to own that had a wood burning fireplace. A squirrel used to hide food in the pile Actually, a lot of people in that neighbourhood had stacks of wood. Houses there were built in the 1960s. For at least the last 15 years, gas fireplaces are installed in new houses instead wood burners.

Thanks for the tip about the wood stacks and how to built them. It just so happens I have some balsa wood

Does anyone use painted sandpaper for walkways or for detailing on houses, or on anything else? I painted a strip of 120 grit a pale grey. I watered down the acrylic paint a bit so a bit of the brown of the sandpaper could still show through. Not sure what I'll use it for, but it might come in handy somewhere along the line.

Stacked firewood! That's a detail I hadn't thought of. It would be very appropriate on my layout. In Oregon, most people don't have 3 years worth of firewood, but you cut in the fall for the following winter and rotate your stacks. Some folks who live out of town in the forested areas sell 'seasoned firewood' for those who don't have the time, space or inclination to season their own.

Around here, most wood is stored basically in what would look like a dirt floor porch attached to a garage or outbuilding.

Back to Beverly's original question: I've heard that the door sizes between manufacturer's varies noticably. This is one place where using building models from different manufacturers could be a visual distraction. How do the door sizes compare between the Kibri, Faller and Vollmer buildings?

Jeremy

Hi Beverly,

I´ve worked with all three brands and each has good items - which can be combined any way you´d like.

That said, I must add that imho some of the kits are not preferable. Mostly because they are off scale, that is too large for Z. Especially some of the older Faller kits are more N scale than Z. Vollmer was off on a great start with the Neuffen station and the half timbered houses, but got lost with a set of weird looking houses of the so called Adlerstreet. Not only are the kits all based on the same parts, they are way out of scale. Take a look at this picture, they even used N scale figures (at left, near the door) in combination with Z scale folk (at the right in the rear), to cover this up.

Just go with your gut feeling with regards to mixing different brands, and don´t forget the kleinserien hersteller.

Matt

Sneaky!!
For small roofs I've used "Paint Samples" from Home Depot. Sounds crazy- but some "designer" paints - like Ralph Loren- whatever, have textured paints. Thier brochures show a lot of colors-- so get a lot of brochures. If a larger area needs to be covered, cut in strips- also adding another dememsion. I also use copies, for other textures.-
example..BEHR has semi-transparent CONCRETE stains, the samples are very useful for patios, etc.
Painting the plastic buildings is preffereable. It takes away the sheen, and what I find a little of the translucentcy, and then slightly dry brushing for weathering. Weather "Stains" on roofs where water might run down beside chimneys and stacks. A house weathers differently on all 4 sides.
One other thought- I've been told that colors for Z should be one shade lighter. I respect these modelers as they themselves are artists.. But I have never figured how to make white one shade lighter.
That's it for now- I have only built one German building so I can't sprechen
to that.
Fred

Matt,

Thanks for the heads up on Adlerstreet. I didn't see any of those kits for sale when I was looking. I've got several buildings on their way to me right now. If they aren't in my mailbox, they're sitting in Canadian customs. I think that's why postage is so expensive - because of customs storage fees


Fred,

I wouldn't often use white straight out of the tube for buildings. I'd add a bit of grey or tan or something to take away the starkness of white.

Hello Matt,
mdvholland wrote:

Vollmer [...] got lost with a set of weird looking houses of the so called Adlerstreet. Not only are the kits all based on the same parts, they are way out of scale.

Thanks for the head up on the Adlerstreet kits. Just that about using the same parts in different kits I see that as a way to reduce costs efectivly. If you colour the parts different and additionally use some different parts like halftimber parts, edges at the walls or a roof window or another extension on the roof, you get houses that look different enough for a realistic scene. But wrong scale is a nogo...

Besides, those houses didn't look so weird at all. Those houses you can find in real life here. I'm still working on some pictures for my thread about landscape and details.

Hi Ulie,

I fully agree with you. I know that the houses are not unusual for Germany, but like you said, messing with the scale is not only uncomprehensable, it is a nono for kits today.

Keep your thread coming! Coming nice spring weather, hop on a bike, take a camera with you, and inform us on your surrounding landscape and towns. If I migth make a suggestion? Get the unusual normal stuff: phone booth, police office, supermarket (there´s no supermarkets in Z, but every town has one! why not on your layout?), is a German gas station different from US or other European countries? Etcetera

Matt

I found a great tutorial on weathering plastic buildings at the Busch website . It's written in German, but Translate.Google does a pretty good job of translating the pages into English.