Stoney Creek Designs Main Street Merchants in O Scale

Stoney Creek Designs sells three O scale kits in their 2018 Main Street Merchants series. The kits include a Meat Market and Real Estate Office, a Tin Shop and Pool Hall, and a little Book Store.

Stoney Creek Designs Main Street Merchants in O Scale

O Scale (1:48)By Bob Brown/photos by the author

Stoney Creek Designs sells three O scale kits in their 2018 Main Street Merchants series. The kits include a Meat Market and Real Estate Office, a Tin Shop and Pool Hall, and a little Book Store. I purchased the Meat Market and Real Es-tate Office, and Tin Shop and Pool Hall at the 2018 National Narrow Gauge Convention, and have assembled both. I have yet to purchase the Book Store.

The Meat Market and Real Estate Office kit sells for $90.00, and includes laser cut wood walls with tabs and slots that snap together nicely. These walls then have to be covered with individual planks, battens, or tar paper with battens. The roofs are covered with tarpaper, corrugated material, and shingles. Signs are included, as is laser cut acetate for the plastic windows and doors. This acetate fits perfectly. One thing that bothered me was that all the interesting shapes, slopes, and textures seem to be on the rear of the building, and do not show from the front. I left off a platform at the rear of my model because it will never be seen. As directed in the instructions I used PanPastels (also available from Stoney Creek) to color and weather my model, and was very pleased with the results.

The instructions come as several pages of suggestions for tools, adhesives, and paint, fol-lowed by a hundred or so captions. These captions are keyed to photos on a CD that you can download. These photos take you through the assembly, painting, and weathering of your model. While there is a lot to learn on this CD, I usually go through the photos and print what I think I will need. However, I often have to go back and print more photos.

Main Street Merchants

The Tin Shop and Pool Hall is a more complicated model and sells for $225.00. It consists of cast resin brick walls, with excellent brickwork. You clean up the cast walls, spray paint them, and wash on mortar to delineate the bricks. The windows do not have openings, so you need to paint the window areas black. You then add the plastic doors and windows, and laser cut wood window headers and sills. Some of the plastic windows have to have their trim cut off, so they will resemble casement windows. All the windows and doors fit perfectly, as did the laser cut window acetate.

Three of the walls are laser cut wood, and have several layers of parts. This results in a complicated and detailed look. The back wall is covered with tarpaper and battens, and a large door has to be built up. The roofs are covered with tarpaper, corrugated, or metal seamed roofing. You make the metal, seamed roof by cutting two pieces of scribed sheet styrene to fit the roof, and gluing on thin strips of styrene. My strips are none too straight, but the stand-off roof sign covers up my wiggly seams. The instructions in this kit also consist of printed captions, with photos on a CD that you can view or download.

I am pleased with my buildings. They bristle with detail, and signs, and “weathered-up” well. Now, all I have to do is get one of those Book Stores to complete my set.

Stoney Creek Designs
4100 Hunters Run Blvd.
Reading, PA 19606
(610) 898-3456


January/February 2019This review originally appeared in the January/February 2019 issue of Narrow Gauge & Short Line Gazette