Plastruct N Scale Items

Of course, I may be way off base and wallowing in my own ignorance, but until today, the only actual N scale items I have seen at a craft store are ladders.

Today, I saw (and purchased since I was compulsed) the following:

Brick sheets 1:200 (admittedly not N but looks better than the HO stuff 1:100).

Random coursed stone- same scale

BUT, BUT, BUT- the one that intrigued me was the 91529 .020"/0.5mm wood planking.

All of the above are in sheets 6 7/8"x 11 3/4" (just remember who is doing the measurements) and the planking looks absolutely perfect for track crossings for automobiles and foot traffic.

 

I make my bridges out of their shapes.

 

Who is the manufacturer?

Which craft store?

Thanks.

 

Flash he is referring to Plastruct and most shops have it or can get it.

Plastrut has an entire line (albeit small line) of N buildings / businesses/ structures. We only discovered it about 4 months ago and can't keep it in stock even though I've not had time to put a folder of webpages on our website.

 

George-

Please do. I would rather purchase from you.

 

I've seen the Evergreen plastic stuff, but had not been aware of Plastruct (or just too dull to notice it). But I started to look at their website to see what they might have available, other than shapes and sheet.

I came across 'barren tree' armatures made of brown plastic for use with the usual foliage materials to make trees. I don't recall anyone mentioning these in tree construction posts.

Also under new items they have various trees, with foliage already in place. Also palm trees.

Anyone here used them and care to comment on how good they found them, especially the barren tree armatures and the completed palm trees?


Regards

 

I apologize for my inability to see the Plastruct in the title. In my experience, Evergreen has a finer tolerance and nice strip/sheet styrene.

But Evergreen cannot come close to the variety of Plastruct shapes. Plastruct has sheets and stripos, but they also have truss structures, cones, globes (ball/ellipses) tubes of very large sizes, ladders and other details, pipes and pipe junctures, etc. I understand that Plastruct is the preferred material for architect models. The structures line for Plastruct is fairly recent.

I believe that Evergreen is more widely known for train modelers, but Plastruct is better known commercially.

I have some Plastruct buildings and they are pretty nice. I use an HO scale water tower on my N scale layout.



[ February 20, 2005, 09:24 PM: Message edited by: sapacif ]

 

EverGreen has a large inventory of plastic shapes and sheets of different siding material from corrigated metal to board and batten. I compare them to being the plastic lumberyard of building shapes from 2x4s to car siding. PlastiStruct is sort of like the hardware store to me for the already built ladder strips in about 40 foot N scale strips to pipes and valves.

PlastiStruct makes a general purpose plastic solvent cement that will work for almost all types of plastic found in an orange labeled bottle and work pretty much across the board on everything plastic. The cement works by actually melting some of the plastic fusing it together, hence the solvent cement in the name. They also make a cemnet for strictly ABS I believe in a white labeled bottle.

Basically I swear by my orange label PlastiStruct for almost anything where as the white label is more material specific.

Another good one is Tenax 7R. Another across the board plastic solvent cement however more difficult to work with. This one has a rapid evaporation rate that requires you to have both pieces fit together before applying. Best applied using a metal glue applicator. Plastic Struct is a little slower to set thus a little more forgiving allowing you a very brief time to slightly repostion something

 

One on the nicest things available from Plastruct in N scale is open back stairways. MUCH easier than trying to make them from stripwood in N scale! Handrails are also available for them.

 

Continuing on this thread about Plastruct...I have just used ACC to bond ABS to styrene. Is it going to hold?

Is the Plastruct liquid cement better for that purpose? Will it bond ABS?

Russell: How do you bond the ABS?

Here is an interesting page on plastic types:
http://www.plastruct.com/Pages/Properties.html

 

It should hold. I use it all the time for ABS to styrene bonds on my bridges.

 

The palm trees are not bad looking. They can be tought to come by though.

 

I have used the Plastene stuff made by Plastruct. It takes a while to dry, though.

 

I just used some ACC and it seemed to do okay. I thought that Tenax7 did not work at all on the ABS. My buddies at the club almost universally said that they do not use the Plastruct ABS. It does appear that all the items made in ABS are also made in styrene, but my LHS doesn't carry duplicates of that stuff.

I would say that the white styrene is best, but ACC the ABS if you have to. Plastene by Plastruct would be next. Thanks for the help.

 

I just purchased their N scale playground equipment I plan on using for a Memorial park to honor my late grandfather that was a railroader

I have used their stairs and railings and they are nice. Also have used their I-beams to use as support for the ME bridge plates. I had a heck of a time bonding those 2 dissimilar items together, I ended up using Zap-A-Gap ca+ the slow thicker stuff, rubberbanded the whole rig together for 2 days. Is holding up fine. Well well see, when one of my trains ends up falling I will let you know

I may have to get the water tower in HO that looks pretty nice in scale for an N scale water tower, since that is one item lacking in N scale is a decent modern era tower.

 

Hi David:

The Walthers modern water tower in HO looks closer to N. You might be able to use that if you are looking for something more modern.

Robyn

 

I've bought some of their n-scale tanks for an oil and gas distributor. I haven't built them yet, but they seem like really nice kits.