We’ll take a look at the SlotStructures grandstand in this article. The competition of racing is one thing, but having a crowd of fans watching you zoom by is just that much sweeter, even if the audience is HO scale! This grandstand is complete with ticket booths in the rear of the building as well as counters for refreshments or souvenirs. Below is the un-assembled kit.
This kit has a lot of parts, some of them, like the seat planks, are thin and require some careful handling when you are putting this kit together. SlotStructures supplies you with a couple of extra planks in each size, just in case you break one. All of the kits are easy to assemble, slot and tab construction. I have press fit the pieces together so I could disassemble the parts for the step by step detailing article coming up. A little white glue will make these assembled pieces, fixed and permanent.
Slotstructures wastes no space in their designs, The rear side of the grandstands are complete with a ticket booth and concession sales. It also has a press box and flag stand built into the kit.
Here we can see some of the additional details and effort used to capture the local bullring or maybe a facility from an earlier era of racing history. The kit also comes with several paper cutouts for detailing your grandstand. There is even a crowd that can be used to make the grandstand look full, or you can purchase and add figures to the seats and stairs.
The article that covers the detailing of the SlotStructures Grandstands can be read here: Detailing the SlotStructures Grandstands
So as mentioned earlier, I have not glued or finished these new offering yet, so you could see them as they come from the manufacturer. All units are designed to accommodate rapid and square assembly and most parts fit tight enough to not need glue, though glue (or glue dots) and paint are always recommended. The kits are also scaled to modern 1/64th scale and not the smaller train scale of 1/87th (true HO) so they more readily accommodate modern HO race tracks and cars.
I will write additional articles on the detailed finishing of these kits, along with some suggestions on how to further add details, both scratch-built and purchased, ready to install (Click here to see the articles). Half the detail battle is won just by starting out with great kits like we have seen here from SlotBorders/SlotStructures.