Deciding on a colour scheme before I’d got the glue out, I then rather tore into the ‘project’. There were - on the weapons sprue - two pieces of cowling or bodywork, which were of no consequence, so presumably it was designed for other kits or taken from another kit? Something which should bring the price down, not leave it three times the cost of a similar kit elsewhere!
I went with a ‘panzer-farb’ ambush scheme on desert pink for the speeder, and field-grey for the pilots, (they haven’t been issued their tropische uniforms yet!) although I allowed them a brighter green for their web equipment, belts and helmets. I used the sight/power-source from one of the other weapons in the box to balance the great big whatever (interplanetary ray-blaster? It could be an underwater riveter for all I know – or care!), that he now gets to wave about like a Bankers sports car (you know what I mean!) without poking it in the TC Gunship pilot’s ear!
The TC Gunship ready to roll, or wobble like a Segway with a newbie! Keeping the WWII theme going I went with the contrasting double-outlined boundaries seen on some of the early M4 Shermans in the Western Desert and tried to make the ammo-feed belt look like the slightly-green tinted, gold anodized links you get on the 30mm rounds for automatic cannon or belt-fed grenade launchers.
The ‘Speeder bike’ given the same 4-view treatment, of course it’s not a Speeder-bike, which would create issues with Mr. Lucas who’s as happy to sue as Carter Ruck! If the other platform is a ‘Gunship’, this must be a Cannon-canoe, yeah, of course it is -it’s a Nebillian Boat-works* PS Mk12! How silly of me not to mention that earlier…
The two together, waiting for the ‘Off’, if I had to do this again, I’d bin the bloody PVA’s and use enamel, it was like working with wet sand, I don’t know if it’s the weather, or just age, but my Humbrol is starting to get as granular as the old Airfix matt enamels used to be? Try copying the third image to your desktop and then enlarge by 50% you’ll see what I mean; great lumps and streaks of paint! I also rushed it, and would take more time next time. I didn’t think about markings, and now they’re ‘finished’ I doubt I’ll go back to them.
This is my rather pathetic sample of Lone*Star ACW figures, well; I have only been collecting larger scales for a couple of years, and money’s been tight!
Four Confederates in reasonable condition, paint on the trousers of the first one will lead to an update sometime, but as it’s a different shade, it stays for now. Inset is a 60mm figure from Crescent to show how these two companies went with a very similar paint scheme.
Might I also suggest that the sculptor (Erik or Revere/Riviere?) used a Britains ‘Swoppet’ Cowboy head as part of his master sculpt for the running-waving-hat figure? He is far more detailed than the other faces, and looks vaguely familiar.
The only Union figure I have happens to be the only pose I don’t have in Confederate garb (the two sets were the same 8 poses, in either grey or navy blue plastic), while the officer is a repaint on a confederate-grey figure.
Soldiers, pilots and civilians/rail passengers, the relevant rail staff are dealt with in a couple of the posts below somewhere and the entire range of Hornby Dublo/Hornby/Hornby-Triang and Hornby Railways sets and issues will be covered in another post another time, as will a more in-depth look at the relationships - as I understand them - in the Modelmaster/Merit/Wills/
The Trojans are bigger than both Airfix and Britains ‘Trooscale’ who were aiming at a market which was quite dominated by the smaller European HO railway equipment, and the associated buildings, trees and so on that the war gaming fraternity were interested in campaigning their Airfix figures through!
All the Trojans in this collage are from the set known to the hobby as set ‘B’ or set ‘2’ or ‘The second set’, as neither set is identified anywhere other than the catalogue list, there is no guarantee that this is the correct way round, apart for the fact that these poses seem currently less common than the other 4 poses and it seems reasonable to assume they were in production for a shorter time.
Set 1/A/The first set; The extra pose here is the prone machine-gunner, clearly sculpted by an amateur, probably from someone else’s casualty (?), and I’ve shot three together to show that he is meant to look like that! His weapon seems to have been sculpted from the weapon on the deck of a common pocket-money/bath toy MTB of the time from Hong Kong, and is a scaled-down twin-Oerlikon (with shield) from the front deck of the said boat.
Added 29/02/12 I've been waiting a while for this, now it's here - the 'shop stock' box; this is the second one to turn up in the States, and like the previous one contained only the four 'set A' poses, originally about 36 sets of them.
Purely by a process of elimination (which is by no means accurate), I have tentatively identified these (‘T?’) as being from the other two sets in the Trojan Catalogue; Passengers and Rail Staff. Both are taken from the Britains/W.Horton/Trix (‘B’) range of ‘Trooscale’/Lilliput figures.
The packaging is obviously not contemporaneous with the contents of this set, which would originally have been tied in with some unbleached or neutral coloured cotton thread; the mounting-card has also been lost over the years.
Of the three AFV’s the armoured car is more common than the two tanks, hinting at a smaller set with just the A/C and a few figures. The 4-post wire entanglements are from the large scale range and are over-scale for this set, but were included in it.
It’s hard to date the origins of the range that led to this set as the T34/85 is a late-/post-war Soviet standard, while the generic Cruiser/Covenanter is a pre-/early-war British item, this box would date from the late 1950’s (?), and the incongruous nature of the contents is not worth dwelling on as it’s almost certainly explained by a total lack of interest in accuracy on the part of the toy-makers.
“…Soldier…Sailor…”. Most of the Crescent small scale metal figures were scale-downs from their large scale hollow-cast range, but due to the small size are - in fact - solids. I’ve only found 6 poses, one of which – as we’ve already seen above – was not apparently produced by Trojan for reasons lost in the mists of time (the marching pose to the right of the lower line-up in the 2nd row), and they came in a wide range of colour-finishes, the later ones being all-over bar the hands, face and weapon, the earlier batches having separately painted bases.
The Naval personnel came with either a blue-green coating, a metallic ‘spirit’ finish along the lines of penny-toys (officer; top left) or in a more realistic navy-blue. These figures came in sets with small slush-cast naval vessels, again in the penny-toy style, with a coat of silver paint, and sometimes a weathering/antiquing in a darker wash or ink/stain. The tin-plate fort comes with the larger scale figures, but goes much better with these!
The semaphore-flag signalers, seem to have come in two versions; big flags (middle guy) and small flags (right-hand figure), but…when you look again at the chap on the left, it’s clear his right hand flag (left as you look), is not the same as the other two, his v-neck is shorter and he is taller, and apart from him; none of the other arms seem to have been accidentally bent?
Could these have come on a card spelling out something such as ‘Crescent’? I stress – I’ve only ever found them with their arms up, but the second and third figures definitely seem to be spelling two different letters?
The Air-force figures, I’m pretty sure they’re all Crescent, the baton-wielding ground-crewman is not spelling out anything and always comes in this easy to damage pose, consequently he is (nearly) always missing at least one bat, and I’ve got a whole bag of similar can’t-direct-a-plane-for-toffee guys! However; once they’ve had a cross-pollination training weekend course with the Preiser synchronized swimming girls (which always end in drunken ribaldry in the Mastermodels ‘Dog and Partridge’), they learn to work in pairs, as these two are!
Top Left shows the same picture already seen in the Trojan Article, to the right is a ticket-issuer or platform vendor (?), the chap on the right has clearly been painted as a vendor of something rather than a member of Railway Staff.
Below them is the full range as I know it, the man at the back right is showing the hole used to fix him to a Trix platform. I’m not 100% sure about all the cargo, most is Britains/Horton/Trix, but some of the barrels may well be Wardie/Mastermodels, as might the small box on top of the two bigger ones? The trolleys; both powered and trailing, are marked ‘Trix’ and may well have been exclusive to them, although the powered trolley is listed in the Lilliput range (LB/549). Of interest is that Airfix (most pirated of companies after Britains), did themselves pirate the large box (Britains; No.LB/546 Large Packing Case) for their HO/OO strongpoint/outpost Playset type kits!
The last image is possibly the most interesting; as it shows the figures I used to think were the Trojan ones, even though they were hard styrene plastic, until I found an early Merit box with the same mouldings, it then transpired that they were ex-Wardie ‘Mastermodels’ moulds, which we now know emigrated to Merit upon the demise of the former. However by the time that had all come to light, the soft-plastic one had turned up and he took the mantle of ‘possibly Tiny Trojan’!
Mastermodels by Wardie have also been looked at in this series of articles and should be the next but one down the page, although - like the Hornby family (see note in the ‘Initial Article’ 3 posts above) - there is a lot more to the Wardie/Mastermodels, Merit/Model Scene, Peco/Guagemaster, Slater’s/Wills story than I’m ready [can be arsed] to cover here.
The Britains/Horton/Trix passengers/civilians with colour variations, again the Trojan photograph is re-produced bottom left. Bottom right shows another Trix mounting hole, and it’s interesting to note that some out-workers painted the woman with handbag as sometimes looking to the side, sometimes; looking forwards. The Golfer however has a pigs snout and can only be painted looking sideways, this WAS the era of ‘Animal Farm’!
To prove the necessity of my stressing that the identification of the Trojan civilians is still very tentative or conjectural, here are some other figures that contend for the title. Top left are some soft plastic/polyethylene figures based upon, but not the same as; the Wardie/Mastermodels set of stevedores (57), while to the right is a hard styrene better quality copy of one of the plank-carriers from the same set. Hammond states that there was plastic production at some point from B.J.Ward/Wardie, but the Brookes (who have done most of the work on the subject) don’t mention it, so it could be that the figure on the right is a late Mastermodels issue, and the figures on the left are just piracies? But…either could be the true Trojan figure/s?
Below them are the early Merit figures again, now; usually the Merit figures from Wardie are taken from the same moulds (the Merit ‘Remote Control Driving Test’ game playing pieces for instance), but these are clearly more of a piracy thing, the cut of the waistcoat of the porter carrying luggage makes a good comparison. Merit did copy a lot, so it may be that these were copied before the ex-Wardie people carried the moulds over to Merit as they went bust, which is one version of the tale…
Bottom is the replacement Merit set with both Merit and the current/late (?) Model Scene packaging, note; Model Scene issue/issued theirs without bases.
The Salisbury Station unit from Trix, probably made by W.Horton who also supplied 54mm scenics to Britains who made the Lilliput range of OO gauge figures that Trix used on their TT gauge Railway sets…clear?!
As most of the variants could have been produced by paint alone; The WAF’s, WRAC’s and WREN’s, the Officers and the bereted other ranks; it was good of Merit to go to the trouble of producing 15 new figures for these sets, these being un-related to any Wardie/Mastermodels mouldings.
These are the uniformed personnel; well strictly speaking the guy in red is a civilian wearing a boiler suit!
The three sets of ‘working men’, the matchstick plank-carriers come with the figures bottom left, and are supposed to be unloading a lorry, but the guy directing makes a good ‘crane instructor’ or grounds-man. Apart from the colour variants, the late production seems to have got nothing more than a quick ‘wash’. The figures bottom right, are from two sets, the grey figures come in track-gang (maintenance-of-way to US readers) sets or with a night-watchman’s hut and brazier, while the black and brown ones come in sets of cable layers, black ones with silver knee-pads are miners.
Incomplete shots of the rest of the range, Rail staff top left, mostly public figures top right and the passengers below. The woman with a pleated skirt does not seem to be from the Wardie Mastermodels range, and may be from a die-cast vehicle set of similar age, or a railway accessory from across the pond (making her a railroad accessory!). The newspaper seller would reappear in the Merit board game ‘Remote Control Driving Test’ along with the Policeman, lollypop-lady, 2 Belishia-beacons and a ‘phone-box from Mastermodels moulds – Merit would later redesign the ‘phone-box as a very delicate structure that took a caller figure, Model Scene issued it as a kit, still on the sprue.
Loose figures and other items from the farm range, all badged to W. Horton. The tractor has been looked at before here, and these animals are - for the most part - a bit tatty, but that’s life on the farm for you! Since taking these pictures I have removed the larger pig from the Britains box, there’s no evidence for him being there and I don’t know why he was…probably a piglet from a 54mm range? These are - basically - scaled down from the 54mm range, with the exception of the tractor-driver.
Also Britains Lilliput (originally) are the hunt scene, and in metal; very rare, due to their thin legs and small parts (fox and dogs), as a result I only have one and he’s a very headless rider!
The two box sizes the Farm came in, Horton also produced a lot of the Papier-mâché buildings and scenics that Britains used with this and the larger-scale ranges, a job which had previously been undertaken by Hugar. Also a look at some larger-scale farm from Taylor and/or Barratt versus small scale Lilliput figures from Britains/Horton.
As we also looked at the Crescent military figures above, here is their small scale farm, larger than Britains offering they are quite crudely painted and were probably sold on small cards as penny (or from the likely dates thre’penny or sixpence!) toys. As with the military figures; there are crude home casts/piracies around - not shown here.
Various pilots who can be used as either civilians or early/WWI allied military pilots, with the civilian passengers/onlookers in the central image. Note the wide array of colour schemes. Bottom right is the female pilot I always think is meant to be Emilia Earhart (is that surname right? No Google!), or - more likely - the Brit; Amy Johnson!
The Khaki troops, if you want to see a Douglas Miniatures figure, it may be the left-hand figure in the top right-hand shot! This portion of Skybirds range seems to have more than a passing resemblance to the large-scale hollow-casts by Johillco (John Hill and Co., known as ‘Hilco’ to the plastics fraternity!), with Hill’s products pre-dating Skybirds by a few years, the ‘homage’ would seem to be in their favour!
Various military-looking mechanics and/or ground-crew, I suspect a fair bit of home-painting among the senior NCO with swagger-stick lot, but again, the possibility of some being Douglas miniatures?
The Germans are coming! [National motto of the French, or is that; ‘The British are winning’?]. These come in a variety of greys from the quite dark one on the left in the top photo to a pale grey (officer with pistol), and there were only ever the three combat poses, so if Douglas were going to add figures this would have been where to do so, and they don't seem to have done so.
Stop Press -Taken this weekend on the floor of the NEC, these are all available from Mercator Trading (link to right or Google), I wish I could afford them; both my bikes are damaged and I don’t have the AA gun, while the tanker-lorry is just beautiful, no? A catalogue of the sets at the heights of Skybirds flourishing was reproduced in an early issue of Military Modelling or Airfix magazine, or - I believe - can be found in Meccano Magazine, which is now online somewhere.
Another from Sunday just gone, again all still available from Mercator (who has three ‘Flybirds’ as well - slightly larger at around 1:60), although one of the German Bi-planes might have sold on the day? Much discussion on their first outing led the assembled ‘fans’ to decide these are probably factory finished with home-applied markings, or possibly home-made from kits! Does it matter?......they’re Skybirds!; a few bits of balsa and some wire, with two wheels and a ‘prop’ in a little bag!
Mostly shots of a Confederate ‘Advance to Contact’ over carpet crops, I like occasionally to organize a bit of a war-gaming type setting, strangely; the last time I did so it was also an article of Spencer Smith! I guess the sculpting/pose type that makes Eriksson so distinctive seem to lend themselves to a bit of scenery! There’s a resoluteness to the way they march forward.
Students of the smaller scales will also recognize in the Spencer Smith foot Officer shades of the Giant Napoleonic Officer, itself taken from an Eriksson SAE 7YW figure.
Defending a rather pathetic fence is a larger sized group of 40mm Merten, home-painted Union (most of which are actually catalogued as Confederate!), which I grabbed at the last minute, requiring a bit of judicious camera angling! However they do have Spencer Smith Cannon.
The ‘Minikins’ [AHI?] figures photographed from both sides, this attribution is purely guesswork based on two facts, 1) The mounted figures are marked ‘Japan’ and 2) they appear to be die-cast mazak or a similar hard alloy which Minikins are known for in larger sizes. Whoever made them; they are clearly based upon Spencer Smith/SAE being semi-flat and posed as Eriksson posed his figures.
This woefully unclear or over-complicated (I must get back ‘Publisher’ for Windows!) image is part of an ongoing project of mine to produce a print-on-demand book on the smaller scale stuff from Eriksson, and is trying to show how the range has morphed over the years, so - for instance, looking at the top left, originally all 7 foot poses came in bags of 80 figures, then after a few years hiatus, they were re-issued in bags of 30 separated in to Kepi (P1) or Slouch hat (P2) with the same officers and buglers [I think the totals for those two poses are wrong for the 30 figure bags?], before the more recent single pose issue, which has now become a metal only series (link to right somewhere) with an additional figure - C8.
Likewise the current metal figure ‘dismounted cavalryman’ (CC3), was originally one of the backwoodsmen poses. Notice the similarities between the kneeling firing backwoodsman, similar posed Indian and the 1950’s infantryman previously seen on this blog (click Spencer Smith or SAE in the Tag-list below or the ‘Index’ in the right hand column).
The artillery is less clear and I’m writing to the current purveyors of Spencer Smith separately to see if they can help with identification of the various catalogue descriptions given over the years for both the ACW and AWI/7YW range, but the main piece IS the ACW gun, I’m just not sure whether the other barrel is the other one - sometimes - available in P7 or if it should be the short barrel from the AWI carriage. My P7 contained two identical grey guns as illustrated and no alternative barrel.
I added a quick shot of the poses mentioned above, back-left to front-right; painted SAE, unpainted casting (Prinze August?), Spencer Smith ‘Combat Infantry’ and two Comet/Authenticast (one early US Comet?, the other later Irish Galterra? Or; AHI? See; coments).
