Robert's Dry Goods Kit

This Building like all Landmark structures have some nice architectural detail, but lack window treatments, decals and a sign to finish the building and let you know it is a dry goods store. Some sides requiring squaring to assemble. The instructions recommend sanding, but I found it easier to use a small Modeling plane to trim the sides by taking light passes until I get a shaving the complete width of the side. Although, sanding may be easier if you are not familiar with using hand planes it will certainly take a lot longer. The roof has supports that have to be trimmed to length and are not long enough for all sides,so you have to put small pieces on each side (would it have hurt them to add enough support strips)? The Roof itself has to be cut from a sheet is white styrene they supply. There is some nice architectural detail, but unless you paint it to bring up that detail it would be difficult to see if the structure is more than 18 from the front of the layout. The Kit would have earned a 4 star rating if they would have added some signage or something to say it is a dry goods store.

This was my second effort with a DPM model. Like all DPM models, one has to do a fair amount of prep work to get the building ready for assembly. Take your time to get the imperfections from the molding process removed and smoothed out. And, of course, the beveled edges have to be sanded square as well to get the building squared up. With the appropriate amount of patience, these issues can be addressed property. I very much like the extent of the architectural details on this model. The cornice and window treatments are especially nice. Again, take your time to paint the details, and the model will look very nice. The architectural details on my version of the model were all painted by hand with brush -- I'm certainly not the best at this, but patient effort here will yield positive results. I also had good results with getting the brick mortar to show -- wash is made with 5 drops of water, 5 drops of 70% rubbing alcohol, and one squirt of ammonia cleaner for every one drop of acrylic paint (I went with white paint). Overall, this will be a nice addition to the small Victorian era town in my layout. I'm looking forward to finishing some detailing and getting it installed!