Reviews : Life-Like Hampden Fire Engine House #46 Kit

I received this kit as a birthday present and I'm extremely pleased with the results as pictured on here. The construction is fairly simple to follow from the exploded drawing however pieces can get reversed as I noticed a garage door recessed lining did. The process for assembly is shown in my various step-by-step photos I posted to hopefully assist others in the construction, it can get confusing at times. I never found any helpful photos so I'm supplying some. Once I got past the garage door set-up I worked on the hose drying alcove which again posed some issues in the steps, so I photographed my best efforts in construction. As far as I could tell, I'm correct. Once past that point the remaining two plain brick walls were fairly easy to build and place. One should note that the clear window sections don't align with any window frame sets so I took a neat short cut and used postal service clear packing tape cut to cover the insides of the windows and secure the whole part to the inside of the wall sections, a good trick to speed up construction as you don't have to wait for the glue to dry. The roof needed lots of detailing, in the finished model you see various vents from other building kits and the watch tower complete with a Diesel horn for the air-raid siren, this completed the overall construction as far as the kit. Next the fun part with a Preiserbrand HO scale set #10642 to round out the super detailing and two near scale fire engines of the dollar store variety that round out the entire scene. This whole kit and the scene I set up makes any HO city scene come alive and ties the entire cityscape together. Let your imagination kick in and have a blast with this kit! I highly recommend this kit.

Overall, very glad I picked this firehouse for my layout, brings back a lot of fond memories from my youth. Very nice design and leaves a lot of options for painting/detailing. Liked the lookout tower very much, Plenty of room inside for lighting, a couple fire trucks and more. I did have some issues though with the kit 1) The instructions were a bit vague in spots, especially with the garage door assembly, I did figure it out but it was a bit daunting at first. 2) An extra part was enclosed that didn't belong to this kit, turns out it belonged to the police station. Thankfully, the parts for the firehouse were all accounted for, nothing missing. 3) The air raid siren was in my opinion very insubstantial, looking more like a tiny steam whistle. A much beefier and realistic looking siren modeled after a real existing one would've been nice. On mine, I wound up getting a 3D printed replica of a real life siren. Quibbles aside, this is a very classic brick cirehouse that will be a very good addition to a layout, lights up real nice too at night with LED's

Another outstanding Life-Like produce; I constructed this kit alongside the Woodlawn Police Department kit. After opening the kit to inspect, there was very little molding flash; all the parts were straight and accounted. The directions were clear and easy to follow, but this project required a little skill to construct, the sidewalls, drains, and drain pipes took some time to line-up and fit perfectly just like the Woodlawn Police Department kit. This kit looks much better then it appears on the website and package; it is a nicely detailed building with modern truck doors and signs. Overall this was a good project and fit well alongside the Woodlawn Police Department building in my small city layout.

Nice model with good detail and unique design elements that will make a nice addition to my HO layout. Simple to build and parts fit up well. Not a lot of clean-up of parts prior to assembly. Instructions were simply an exploded view drawing with not a lot of assembly detail. Molded in color so only a few parts needed painted to enhance detail. Reasonably priced.

Pieces missing, directions could have been done better by a 5 yr old, most pieces are not marked...will never buy Life-Like again....

the door openings are not tall enough to fit engine with latter on top of engine. But looks good.