MiniArt has created a lengthy list of structures, vehicles, and “artifacts” that can be used to enhance dioramas or serve as the main components of a diorama. The Goods Shed features an interesting “front” with windows and a large cargo door, with an attached loading platform and stairs. The structure lends itself to placement near a railroad track but can also just as easily be placed near a street or road.

This particular kit also comes with some extra goodies in the box, not shown on the box top or kit plans. Several lengths of “pipe” are provided in case one wishes to depict fuel or water delivery. Window shutters are included, as are parts for street lamps, iron fencing, and detail parts for the structure such as door hinges, a brick chimney, and other odds and ends.

Assembly:

Assembly can be a bit challenging if one has never built a MiniArt structure or never built a vacuform model of any kind. The walls, roof, and loading dock are all vacuformed pieces. All of the accessory parts such as doors, hinges, wrought iron fences, and street lamps are all injection parts. The vacuform sheets are rather thick, giving them some added rigidity, but this does not impact the quality of the “detailed” side of the sheet. Brick facing and rock surfaces are cleanly molded into the vacuformed parts and are sharp, clear, and appear to be scaled properly. In order to give the walls, roof, and other vacuformed structural components additional strength I used standard household pink insulation, cut to fit inside the MiniArt parts.

When carefully cut and sanded along the joining surfaces the parts fitted together nicely, with no need for putty or filler of any kind.

Painting:

Upon completion of the basic structure, the model was shot with enamel in the “Desert Sand” or “cream” color range. This color provided the desired color for the grouting. The brick and rock surfaces were painted with Vallejo acrylics. The fact that the grouting material used enamel and the brick and rock were painted with acrylic made any clean-up that was needed easy to accomplish. Please note that the image of the finished product is from the MiniArt website.

It should be noted that I used both enamel and acrylic on this model and the MiniArt parts absorbed both types of paint with no difficulty.

Conclusion:

MiniArt designs its structures to allow for the modeler to do a little “kit bashing” and also provides extra parts that can be used to give the finished product several different “looks”. One can easily envision the structure, with the wrought iron fences and gates, located in a city, or with the use of other parts the finished Shed would fit into a village or agricultural scene.

Thanks to the fine folks at MRC - Model Rectifier Corp., MiniArt and IPMS/USA for the opportunity to review this very fine model. This is the 2^nd MiniArt model that I’ve reviewed and I can recommend this line of kits to the modeler without reservation.