The wonder of Metcalfe card kits

 I do like a card kit. The middle part of a trio of buildings that I needed to get done was this N gauge factory from Metcalfe. Of course I had to fiddle with it a little by moving the outers to the inner and putting the loading bays together as would seem logical. The whole structure layout is slightly illogical and that may be why I struggle with the death-by-Metcalfe layouts out there. There are a couple of people who can make these work, the rest just scream Metcalfe. There really has to be a way to lift this, but I haven't yet found it. The N gauge kits seem to suffer less than the OO, but it's still the bright 2D window frames and the consistent brick/stone finish - here I've hit it fairly heavily with the pencil shading and it still looks quite bland. I think the windows need to be replaced, by which time you may as well scratch-build. Also this seems almost to be unique to Metcalfe; the old Bilt-ezzi and the Superquick kits are less of a problem and the Scale Scenes are the best of the bunch, though the download aspect kills these a little for me. Anyway this and the other two buildings are coming to an issue of BRM in the near future.