Triple build review: Verlinden 1/35th scale transformer station, utility & street light poles

Recently Verlinden have released a nice looking bunch of lighting, power and transformer station poles to deck out your modern warfare dio. We thought these would be right handy for a lot of modellers so why not build them up ourselves to look at them?

Triple Build review - Verlinden street utility poles:

Street Transformer Station

#2818

1:35th scale

$38.95

Utility Poles Set

#2822

1:35th scale

$26.95

Light Poles (x2) Road-Street

#2823

1:35th scale

$19.95

All of these are available from Verlinden Directly or their Distributors Worldwide.

When making a well thought out diorama you must think in three dimensions. Width, breadth and height.  As long as having your vehicle, figures and other stuff on the ground, and going up higher with tall tanks etc. you need something to “top it all off” with a little height. When making a forest, wilderness or countryside diorama this is easy – just stick a tree in there.

What about when your dio occurs on a treeless plain or even more – and fairly commonplace now – in a city? Modern cities, especially in the Middle East or Afghanistan have no real trees that would look in place in most situations.

Especially in Iraq power is a unreliable resource and during the war powerlines were in dissaray

I am forever looking for a tall element to add to my dioramas. Having scarcely little to call on in a modern setting I was impressed to see these all new items in Verlinden’s catalogue last month. An email later and they were winging their way to us to review in a big white safely packed box. It took a week tops from the US to Australia.

When the box arrived I was a little shocked to see just how tall these pole light and power sets were. The street lights were not so large but the utility pole and street transformer station were really BIG. The boxes are nearly 35 cm long and 10 cm square – a lot of padding in there in the form of bubble wrap and long strips of cream resin. 

The resin in our kits was pretty good – no real problem with bubbles and not too much to cut off – the kits themselves really didn’t take too long to make and with a little extra caring and trimming they went together pretty easily.

Let’s look at all three sets together to see what they are like….

Street Transformer Station

#2818

1:35th scale

$38.95

We now have the power to recreate a modern(ish) street side transformer station in cream resin in 35th scale.  The kit is made up of sixty-two parts of cream resin, plastic rod/plastic flex tubing that makes not only the metal poles but the conductor coils and the metal cabinets the electrical gizmos are hidden in it. We also get a base of resin “concrete” and of course some wiring to add to the scene. 

The real thing with slightly different poles

This set is laid out by the height of the steel & concrete poles. The longer one is a 28cm pole and the other shorter one is the 21cm concrete pole. You could chip these and wear them as you like and they will come out very well. The long strip of casting block resin is a simple enough removal – use the non-cutting edge of your large hobby knife or box cutter to score the resin – then carve the remnants with the back of the knife as well which straightens the edges nicely.

The concrete foundation these two poles sit on increase their height as well by 2cm. It is a rough looking block and quite thick. The transformer boxes and transformer itself are well moulded. You will have to do some roughing up work on the back of the boxes as this is the pouring side that is not finished.

Here are all of the other little bits of the kit. Several conductor porcelain parts, several small nuts and bolts which simply sit on the other side of the parts that are fixed to a pole make for a believable fixed item. The streetlight and pole that holds it is included here which is a great thing to either add or not. The steel “I” beams are what the transformer itself sits on.

The base encompasses the two power poles – I built the poles and their attachments first – then I secured them to the concrete looking base. The “I” beams are added across the two poles and then the transformer sits on top of these two beams.

The only thing needed are the wiring which you can add to yourself. I used the bendable plastic pipe included in the kit and there is wire here to use as well- this I did not add as I wanted to paint it.

I like this set up – a lot of depth and options to customize the pole layout to suit your street set up. Once the wiring is added this will look very convincing. 

Utility Poles Set

#2822

1:35th scale

$26.95

 

To add to the earlier power poles from Verlinden comes this set of two poles to include in your 35^th scale diorama. Both are made from cream resin but have the look of pitted concrete which will very much suit a Middle East modern warfare diorama or a European countryside piece. Bird poo is not included!

A very similar set to the Street Transformer we just looked at – this set is made up of cream resin again and the same conductor connections, brackets and fake wire is added to with two large poles again – the same size as the others we looked at.

The two separate concrete blocks anchor this all on to the deck of your dio. A small and large transformer is included here as well.

The longer one is a 28cm pole and the other shorter one is the 21cm concrete pole. Again they are a simple removal process from the resin pouring block. Just use my patented method of scoring, bending and snapping off the excess and then shaving the rough bit with again the back of the hobby knife. It saves time and fresh blades and it’s the fastest and best method I found.

When building these about the same time was taken as the transformer station. Mainly because the porcelain insulators of the cables and the brackets that come on have to be trimmed of excess carefully... The rubberised wire works well for a power line to the house – I would use a thin insulated or electrical bit of twisted wire to make the pole-pole connection.

 

Again they are a great pair – not really sure why they are different heights – but if you need two shorter poles just get the saw out! 

Light Poles (x2) Road-Street

#2823

1:35th scale

$19.95 

A single light is shown here but the cream resin set includes two streetlamps. This light could well do a 1960’s era and beyond streetlight and it does suit the telegraph and street power utilities set already launched from Verlinden.

These two lights are quite elegant – they are pretty streamlined so they can be used right up to the present day. They look like they could fit into most modern dios.

Small instructions show how to use the copper wire included to bend the flexible nylon included in the kit.

Four nylon hollow rods and bendable brass wire is included in the kit. 

The two poles which secure these posts in are already mounted on the concrete bases already. You can easily make out the doors used to gain access to the poles.

The brass is used to bend the end of these poles – I used a cylinder to bend these to make the same angle for both of them.

This is a great duo of poles as well. 

 They fit in with the other sets very well and you can make a street setting with all of these that would look quite convincing. You could make a whole street with these - what a great little set!

Adam Norenberg

All of these products are now available on the Verlinden website at the links above..Thanks to the VP crew for sending them to us to build and review

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