....and out of the box!
A hand-built, all-wood, fully-finished model of Ilfeld station (a small village halt on the southern part of the Harz network - some of those on the forum who have done Harz holidays have probably travelled through it). Purchased through German eBay, direct from the chap who made it, Herr Gunter Kossow. Under his trading name of GK-Holzmodellbau he seems to make a number of these, and put them up on eBay.de one or two at a time - as well as Ilfeld, he presently has a lovely Drei-Annen-Hohne model (Harz again) plus an RhB station, "Preda".
It was Jerry (Lone Ranger) who pointed me to this model, and I watched it go round on eBay several times (it was on a "BIN or best offer" listing) before I took the plunge - I will say that I made an offer that was accepted and thus got it for significantly less than the BIN price!
It wasn't exactly a cheap item, of course, but for what you get I'm extremely happy - it cost SIGNIFICANTLY less that you'd have to pay for the Pola kits to make a similar-sized building, and less than I've paid for even a medium-sized LGB loco.
Buying a hand-made model via eBay, especially internationally, can be fraught with dangers - no matter how good it looks in the photos, will it match up in reality, and will it survive the shipping? In both cases, here the answers were "yes" - as I already mentioned in the above post, the packing was superb - and the unpacked model is every bit as lovely and well-made as the photos promised. A few small parts came uninstalled (carefully bubble-wrapped in a small separate box within the massive one), including the picket fence/gate section that links two of the buildings, a couple of chimney stacks and the sign board for the Gasthof (which is on two brass rods to carefully fit into pre-drilled holes on the fascia of the main building, I haven't yet fitted it in my photos).
Anyway, so here are the eye-candy pics of the freshly-unpacked model (the few white flecks and spots are not marks, they are bits of packing polystyrene that I haven't fully brushed off yet!), just hastily put out onto a folding table for some photos. The station consists of three main building units, plus the gate/fence section between the main building and the open waiting room. I've tried to take pics from most angles, and also shown a Harz 2-6-2 and Cafe coach to give you an idea of the overall size.
Herr Kossow mentions in his postings that he will make buildings to order, or any design or plans that you wish - on the strength of the Ilfeld model, I'd have no hesitation in recommending him for anyone here who wants a station or other building for their layout, something different from the standard Pola/Piko ones that you see everywhere.
As this is a review (albeit a brief and mainly pictorial one) I suppose I should mention one negative point - but honestly the only one I can think of is that Herr Kossow obviously smokes in his workshop, and as a result both the model and the packaging whiffs quite a bit of cigarette smoke! That'll wear off soon enough, though, and eventually I'll get round to fitting some lighting and a few "dress-up" details, figures in the waiting room, and much more.
Jon.
