Bachmann Plasticville O/S Hospital as Med-Tek Clinic


A while back, I lucked into a couple of “grab bag” deals on Plasticville O-scale (well, MOSTLY O-scale) parts in a big ol’ box on Ebay. The parts were all stuffed in a box rather than spread out, the picture was blurry, and it was a matter of a leap of faith that there were more pieces in that box and it wasn’t just stuffed with, I dunno, empty sprues or something. Oh, and what I COULD see was broken, caked with glue, a few pieces melted from being too close to a lightbulb, etc. – really bad condition. But … I’m making RUINS, so that’s fine! :smiley: As long as it’s cheap. (In fact, I kind of PREFER getting broken kits to work with, because I feel guilty if I end up messing up something complete and in good condition.)

Here, I had a few pieces from the Bachmann Plasticville O/S-scale Hospital kit: the front facade (missing the front steps), back wall (“clinic” entrance), and a broken rooftop piece (corner broken off, and missing some sort of rooftop greeble/box thing). I probably COULD have faked a building by just giving it some foam core side walls and calling it a day, but the idea occurred to me that what was the “back” wall could just as easily be a side, and I could make a sort of “corner facade ruin.”

Or, I’m not quite sure what to call it, but one thing I’ve seen a lot for wargame tabletop ruins are these buildings where you have two walls forming a corner, maybe with an interesting street entrance, perhaps even a corner sign, but the roof is gone, and there are only partial floors – a perfect tiered spot to position snipers to shoot through the windows, but open to the air so you can easily move them around.

Only, in this case, I had a ROOF, which kind of spoiled that idea to an extent.

Holding the whole thing together was a bit of a challenge, but fortunately I found THIS at the thrift store:


These “Power City” construction sets are basically a remake of the old “Girder & Panel” toy sets that have been around since the 1950s, occasionally getting re-released, sometimes under a different name, every 10-20 years or so. I actually had a couple of bridge sets of them when I was a little kid. There are plastic I-beam shapes that plug together to make frames, and some of the sets include braces that attach to those pegs sticking out the sides to make trusses, or loops where you can attach string to act as cable to string up a “suspension bridge.”

Now, it’s a cheap source for plastic I-beams to give some sort of hint of an under-structure to modern or retro-futuristic ruins. I just need to trim off those pesky pegs that tend to get in the way of things.


Since the rooftop piece compromises the utility in actually accessing the interior to place minis, I’m treating the interior as a “no-go” zone for minis. (If I want to handle figures being /in/ the building, I’ll abstract it by having a tile off to the side that represents “Floor 1” and “Floor 2,” etc.) Still, since the interior space is at least partially visible, I still added in some clutter so it doesn’t look strangely pristine and empty. I just didn’t go so far as to make a complete layout and work in critical things like stairs, an elevator, indoor plumbing, etc.


The Hospital is actually one of the Plasticville kits that I think really works for the retro-futuristic vibe of Fallout. The kits were originally made in the 1950s, but as toys, the simplified lines, rounded corners, and fairly smooth surfaces seem in keeping with something more futuristic. I like the “Art Deco”-esque look to the hospital’s facade; it’s a pity I didn’t also have the front steps. (I used some layered foam-core to try to make up for that.)

In this case, I used the back wall of the hospital to now become a side; the other two walls are incomplete “ruined” sides, partially represented with some foam-core illustration board.

P.S., the “Mr. Handy” (or Dr. Handy or Mr. Orderly) figure is from the “New California” expansion of the Fallout Board Game. It’s not as finely detailed as the Modiphius model of course, but I kind of like that he’s not riding a giant ROCKET BLAST of fire. (I can’t say that I ever quite understood the technology keeping Mr. Handy perpetually aloft, but the giant rocket-blast plume on the model just seems like overkill.)

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I had one of those construction sets when I was a kid in the late 70’s. It was one of my favorite toys, but my grandmother had a stroke and donated all of our toys to a school. (Bad for me, but good for the more unfortunate, I guess.)

@wittzo : Ah yes! That’s probably the same Kenner line I remember from when I was a kid, circa the late 1970s. I seem to recall it coming out around the same time that Star Wars toys were the even BIGGER deal coming from Kenner. I seem to recall the pieces in the old Kenner sets fitting together a bit better than they do in the Construction City line, but that might just be nostalgia talking.