Wednesday, April 15, 2020

1/600 Buildings from China

Back in early January, I stumbled across a bunch of modelling supplies on AliExpress. AliExpress is an online shopping site in China that I guess is connected to Alibaba, though I am really not clear why or how they are different. They are both Chinese versions of Amazon.com, but everything comes directly from the manufacturer. Two other differences from Amazon.com are that they don't seem to sell books and it takes FOREVER for the stuff to get here. The first time I ordered from AliExpress, which was some dice, it took almost a year for them to ship. This time, it was about three months. And regarding what they sell, if you don't know, or are too young to remember, Amazon.com started off selling books before they got into everything else.
I had the fear in the back of my mind that the packages were dripping with Corona virus. I'm going to assume that they are not contaminated, or if there were any virus particles on them, they did not survive the trip. I sprayed everything with some disinfectant anyway.

I got these buildings. They didn't have a scale assigned to them, but the dimensions seemed like they were roughly 1/600. I ordered a few just to see what they looked like. I have yet to paint them. You be the judge.


These two appear to be small office buildings. They don't seem to have entry ways. The windows on the ground floor almost touch the ground. I assume the small structure on the roof is a stair access.




I bought three of these. They look a lot like large Soviet style, high rise apartment blocks. These apartment complexes are still very much around today throughout cities in China. Many of my in-laws live in such buildings. Like the previous buildings, there doesn't seem to be any doors. At first, I thought the two towers might be for elevators, but they have windows. I might make them into elevator shafts by covering over the windows. I'm not all that certain which is the front and which is the back.

They are very stylistic, and that is OK. I'm going to leave the windows they way they are rather than put clear plastic behind them, or maybe glue black paper behind them. I might buy some more, if I can find them on AliExpress again. UPDATE: Here is the link, and they cost about US$3.00 excluding shipping.

No comments:

Post a Comment