As a present the better half picked up a Plastcraft Games Train Station. This piece is part of their ColorED range and is designed for Malifaux. The kit consists of a number of PVC sheets that have had one side printed with the patterns you see on the box. There is also some texture on the printed sides that gives some nice 3D texture to what is otherwise flat sides.
Packaging: The kit comes in a plain little cardboard box with a printed card stock sleeve that shows the contents. Inside the kit is tightly packed, but neat. I had absolutely no issues with how it was all put together and it arrived in perfect condition.
Contents: Inside the package is a kit that builds the station building you see pictured with all the verandas and platforms pictured. The kit consists of a number of sheets of PVC plastic. The PVC used is a soft plastic that is quite flexible and easy to cut. All the sheets are approximately 3mm thick and either base coloured white or light grey. They go into some detail about this material on their blog. I found it really easy to work with and a total pleasure. Some of the parts come still attached to their frames, and some of the parts also come attached to the windows. Common to other cut-out materials small tab of material are left in to hold the frames together. The pieces can either be punched out, which often leaves a bit of scarring on the surface, or cut out with a simple hobby knife. In addition there is a thin sheet of clear plastic that has the window frames printed on them (a really nice touch).
I like the quality of the printing, it’s nice and bright and the registration is really good. There’s a satin sheen to the colour as well. It’s also registered well against the embossing – so hats off to Plastcraft for their production quality. The aesthetic of the station fits also fits in well with Malifaux’s aesthetic: a slightly run-down Victorian era stone building. The window frame pieces also work really well and do a great job of bringing it together.
Including the platforms and verandas, the model is 23cm wide, 28cm long and 18cm tall; the main building itself is 13cm by 24cm. The doorways are about 35mm wide (and so will comfortably accommodate your standard Malifaux base). One interesting feature is the slight stretch of the building: it’s not quite square and it slightly bigger at the top than the bottom. This is entirely deliberate and indeed they’ve been really careful with the size of the pieces to make sure it all fits together perfectly. The curvature adds to the fantasy/Steampunk vibe of the model; this vibe helps to fit it to the Malifaux aesthetic, but might make the piece less useful if you’re looking at using it for a historical Victorian Era station.
Assembly: Assembly was pretty straight forward with standard super glue doing a good job of bonding the pieces together. I followed the instructions available on their website. One thing to note in the construction is the slight outwards curvature. It does mean you will want to give a little thought to the construction of the four walls. I did it by attaching elastic bands and some bottles to the outside of each piece (see the picture below if this isn’t clear). I then glued two of the walls together and left it for a couple of minutes until it dried. I then glue the floor to these two pieces. The next piece to go on was the other long wall. I didn’t need to worry about the curvature so much as the 2 glued walls retained their curvature and it was just a matter of holding this piece in while the blue set (which is only a minute or so with super glue). Lastly I glued in the final short wall. This was a little tricky as I had to hold it all together and force in the curvature.
The major change I made from the “out of the box kit” was to hide the tabs from the floor. If you look at the box cover art you can see the white tabs from where the floor slots into the walls; I’m not a fan of this appearance. When you receive the model the walls have the slots cut out, but they’re still in place for you to punch out. I punched them out and then sliced most of the plastic off the back of the printed surface. I then glued these back into their home leaving them flush with the printed side. The pictures on the right will hopefully make this clear, I took these as I did one of the two tabs. Lastly I shortened the tabs on the floor pieces to get it all to assemble together. I’m happy with this change as it meant there isn’t the white scars you see on the box art. As you can see in the final picture it’s almost invisible where I’ve replaced the slot and the building holds together fine.
One modification I made from the kit as supplied was to paint the bottom and sides of the verandas. Thee are made from white PVC and only printed on one side. I wasn’t happy with the resulting look so I just painted them and that improved the look significantly. Inspired by this enhancement I also cut out little indents into the platforms and painted these sides as well. This step isn’t necessary, but I think it improves the overall look of the model. The use of grey PVC for the building sides and the way they’ve done the design means this step is NOT necessary for the building sides. I’ve documented the colours below (mainly for my use if I pick up the Train Halt kit).
- Roof Base: 50% Blue Gray Pale (VMC 70.905) & 50% German Camouflage Bright Green (VMC 70.833).
- Platform Base: Medium Sea Grey (VMC 70.870).
- Platform Wash: NATO Camouflages Wash (A.MIG-1008).
Wrap Up: Overall the only fault I can find is on the interior. Presumably in order to safe costs, they haven’t printed the interior of the walls. As a result it’s a plain grey on the inside. It’s not a big issue, but the roof does lift off and they have gone to some effort with the floor and hiding the tabs with scenery details. It’s a very nice piece of terrain and I’m looking at adding some of their other pieces. I’d give it a 9/10 and I plan on picking up some of their other pieces.
In this range they have another train building, some train style details and a couple of swamp pieces. They also have some city pieces, but these are uncoloured so you will have to paint them yourself. Lastly there are also a number of new Circus themed pieces that are with retailers, but not listed on their website for some reason.
- Made for Malifaux ColorED (coloured PVC terrain).
- MF006 – Train Station.
- MF007 – Train Halt.
- MF008 – Swamp Walkways.
- MF009 – Swamp Cottage.
- MF010 – Railway Props.
- Designed for Malifaux (uncoloured, pre-cut and embossed PVC).
- MF001 – Downtown Building.
- MF002 – The Tower.
- MF003 – Graveyard Set.
- MF004 – Sewers Walkways.
- MF005 – Downtown Walkways.
- Designed for Malifaux (uncoloured resin).
