Today's Diner Dienstag offering is another piece of classic plastic - the #DE-7 Plasticville Diner from the 1950s. The Plasticville line of plastic buildings is made by Bachman Industries of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Back in 1947, Bachman produced a white plastic picket fence for use with Christmas displays and putzes. When they found out that people were also using the fences on train layouts the line was expanded to include trees and shrubs and stuff, eventually further expanding with buildings. The buildings themselves are proportioned for 1/64 scale but with 1/48 scale doors. This compromise allowed them to be used comfortably on American Flyer S-gauge layouts as well as Lionel and Marx 3-rail O-gauge layouts and negated the need to produce two separate lines of plastic buildings. However, Bachman did end up producing down-sized copies for use on HO scale pikes. This diner, like the Marxville diner featured a couple of weeks ago, follow similar classic diner designs.
When I was a young-un I had a bunch of Plasticville buildings for my American Flyer S-gauge train but they are long since gone. Then I got into HO scale where I stayed for decades but there was no Plasticville HO scale buildings on my layout. Then I switched from HO to 3-rail tinplate and what should I collect? NOPE - not Plasticville! I got enamored of Marx and made the conscious decision not to collect Plasticville because of cost and space limitations. But every now and then a Bachman building would be acquired as part of an eBay lot or whatever. That's where today's diner comes in. I haven't a clue when or where I bought it but it was here in The Cave for quite a few years where it stayed until last year when I sold it. Should I decide to get into Plasticville I'll buy the buildings with their original boxes. It is a really nice addition to a train layout, a putz, or a diner collection - Enjoy!
