Diorama Base Norman Street - 1:35 MiniArt

[Mike]

Norman Street

1:35 MiniArt

A new release from their diorama range, this is a vacform and styrene multi-media kit that includes some rather colourful posters and shop headings into the bargain. The kit arrives in a large single-engined fighter kit-sized box, and has quite some weight in it. Inside are four large sheets of vacformed styrene and four more of injection moulded styrene, plus the instruction booklet, which has the posters and shop banners printed on the back page.

If you're new to vacformed kits, or could do with some help, you will do well to visit John Adams (of Aeroclub fame) complete "how to" document here for enlightenment. The parts are all well-defined within the backing sheet, so scoring and cutting them accurately shouldn't be a problem, and once the excess styrene is sanded away, the parts will butt-fit together, which will be much improved if you add some alignment tabs from scrap styrene here and there.

The kit builds up into two shop-fronts, based on a cobbled street, in the style of the architecture prevalent in Normandy in WWII. The kit includes the basic interiors, being double-skinned, so there is plenty of scope for decorating the insides of the building with furniture and personal effects. A full set of window frames and doors are included with the injection moulded sprues, but you'll be responsible for installing any glass that you would like present in the finished article. Shutters, guttering and even some wrought-iron railings are also included to allow some personalisation of the finished article, and when it comes to distressing the parts the world is your oyster.

The base is predominantly block paved, with the pavement differentiated by a herring-bone pattern to the blocks, although it would benefit from being raised too, unless this isn't typical of the time. The buildings have tiled and wooden ground floors, with wooden upper floors to the two storeys above ground-level, and the whole thing is topped off by tiled and slated roofs, which have injection moulded end caps to finish them off. Installation of the guttering isn't documented in the instructions, and from looking at it, there probably wouldn't be sufficient to deck out the whole diorama, but it could find use in the rubble or debris if you choose to add some.

The posters and shop fronts are well printed in full-colour on glossy paper, which should be thin enough for most purposes. They just need cutting out and gluing on the background, and would benefit from a coat of matt or satin varnish to tone down the gloss. There should be plenty of spares for future projects too, as there are ten posters in addition to the two shop-fronts, and four small signposts.

Conclusion

As with all of this excellent range of "boil-in-the-bag" dioramas, it will take a little work and some very careful painting, but the time saving over scratch building a similar diorama makes it a very worthwhile project. Inclusion of the fixtures and fittings adds further value, and as usual the moulding, both injection and vacuum, is of a high standard.

Put aside your fear of vacforms and give one a whirl - you'll be surprised how easily they go together.

Recommended.

Review sample courtesy of

[Shar2]

Like it, a very nice looking kit.

[Basosz]

That looks very tempting. I can see the Dio in my head. This street with some street fighting like in Caen, maybe with a german 251 somewhere... endless possibilities

[Silver Fox]

To follow Flemings' third law of modelling, I wish they did them in 1/48th as well. I can find antthing equilivant and I have quite a few models I'd like to display.