MiniArt 1/35 Goods Shed Kit First Look

By Michael Benolkin

First Look

MiniArt is a prolific kit manufacturer from Russia that produces an impressive array of armor kits, figures, and diorama accessories. One series that has been popular is their buildings and accessories series that provides a portion of a building (sometimes the whole thing) to serve as a backdrop in a diorama or vignette. MiniArt has produced a wide variety of building fronts representing a range of subjects from sheds to store fronts that were typical of European architecture during World War II. This particular release caught my attention for several reasons and those of you who are also model railroaders already recognize the potential in this kit.

As with other buildings in this series, the main walls and roof are vacuformed plastic and the plastic is thicker than some of their earlier releases (more rigid). The details are injection-molded plastic to provide the finer details such as lamps, drain pipes, steps, window frames, etc. This kit is molded in medium gray plastic and presented in six vacuformed sheets and six trees of parts.

And as with other buildings in this series, most of the details are on the outside of this kit. Many modelers simply push these partial buildings against a blank (or painted) backdrop and put some combination of vehicles and figures in the foreground. For the more advanced modeler, MiniArt does provide separate panels that render the insides of the outer walls and roof to serve as a starting point for your diorama or vignette. No other interior details are included.

What caught my attention with this release is the raised platform for the loading dock. You could back a truck up to the dock and call it a day, but those of you with scale model railroading tendencies also see that this would look great with a set of tracks alongside and a DML gondola car getting loaded with ammo or supplies with figures standing about. This would be an easy companion for a rail car diorama or vignette.

For the more advanced modeler, you could put a floor inside this model and provide other interior details such as lights, posters, stacked supplies, and figures to help tell part of the story visually for what is going on 'outside'. Kits like these from MiniArt provide many interesting opportunities for visual story telling with no need for explanations.

This new release from MiniArt is nicely done and will find its way into one or more projects on my work bench. I hope MiniArt will do some other trackside buildings that would help to put the nice variety of engines and rolling stock in 1/35 scale into a nice diorama or vignette.

My sincere thanks to MRC for this review sample!