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The Vollmers company in Germany do some gorgeous scale models of buildings, designed for model railway settings. Usually when they get to Great Britain (and this is problematical) they are prohibitively expensive. This is their "Factory in Flames" model depicting a partially ruined building - identifiable from the factory name as a brewery. In Britain this would currently cost nearly £50. But on a visit to Berlin some years ago, when the £ - € exchange rate was extremely good, I was able to get it for the euro- equivalent of £21. I understood that the panoply of vehicles and figures on the box-art were just illustration and they would not be in the (pretty big) box. I was irritated the outer wall of the factory and railings weren't included - I thought those would be fair do's! but my fertile modelling and wargaming mind went to town in this. I thought - rather than a civil disaster to add drama to a model railway layout, this German factory could stand for something knocked about a bit by the RAF, or a small part of a German city in ruins as the Allies move in.

For your money, you get about twelve sprues of differently coloured plastic representing different parts of the building. Therefore there was fairly minimal additional painting to do - I just picked out a few details in metallic paints (air vents and metal chimneys) and made sure the visible parts of the interior was fully coloured - for some reason the interior parts were largely colourless and monotone. I also made sure all the mortar between the brick course was coloured (the outer brick walls and chimnney come in a dull flat brown), dirtied the roof, and emphasised the rubble and smoke-blackening where called for. Staining agents are provided in the model, as is lighting wiring and red bulbs to simulate fire (not used)

I have already used the undamaged parts of this set as backdrop for Russian tanks and infantry. this is the whole model - a King Tiger that came easily to hand and a German infantryman have been used to show scale.

A lovely kit and well worth the work!