The Preiser
'season' has become alternating wagons/people/wagons posts because of these
chaps. I was just going to do the long overdue wagon posts and thank Gary
Worsfold for them, but though, "Ooh,
I could use the on-line catalogue images to show some of the wagons missing
from the photograph-able line-up?", only to find that Preiser had added a dinky little
shepherd's hut on wheels to the range recently. So; a shepherds post became
inevitable, and lead - through the contents of both boxes and the catalogue - to
the full season!
Starting with a comparison shot we've got
the standard Merten 'six figure' box
on the left and all sorts on the right. The Hong Kong stuff (copied from Marx) is best suited to 28mm role
play/gaming than HO/OO railway layouts
Preiser painted their three sheep poses while Merten just gave you 18 poses and changed the plastic colour
occasionally! Airfix delivered three
slightly larger (OO - 1:76th'ish) sculpts; quite a flock, and they would all go
together in a sheep market or show setting as different breeds, the Airfix passing for Merinos.
You can add Merit (OO and N gauge compatible) and Britains Lilliput (the same two poses, the former plastic copies of
the latter), Bachmann and/or Revell (?) and possibly a Crescent pose (?), they did a goat!
Additionally; Preiser are starting to
introduce new sculpts based on the old Elastolin
moulds they inherited - although they're supposed to have the Merten moulds somewhere, too?
Box/catalogue art and the current budget-paint
catalogue image for Preiser, they are
phasing-in a third (of three) shepherd, slightly different from the ex-Elastolin sculpt.
I used to think the above shot shows the
new sculpts, there's not much in it, the surface detail is a little better and
some configurations are issued with a ram, missing for the last 40/50-odd years,
but I think it's a reversed image of the old ones!
Below is a big question mark we'll be
looking at fully in a separate post in a day or two, but some sets of what used
to be 327 have a single set of
sheep, but the dogs and shepherds from two 'six-figure' sets as shown here,
however I have two sets without the extra's and . . . well, we'll look at it
later!
I'm missing a prone painted eepie-deep, but
these are loose scraping from more than one set anyway! Merten above: they're
not such good sheep, sculpt-wise, but there's so many poses and I think they're
better-animated!
To the right is the new shepherd's van,
which comes - here - as a kit, but is also available as a made-up model in more
than one set. I think it's looking ripe for conversion to a WWII Soviet cooks
trailer/field kitchen? Or a junior staff-officer's towed office? Now that the
Eastern Europeans are issuing all those fantasy sets in 1:76/72, it could be
all sorts of things - Halfling's caravan, Dwarves' mobile-forge, Wizard's
spell-lab . . . all sorts
Three of the sets with the new sculpts,
there seem to be about 5 poses of sheep, a (new?) dog and the third shepherd
moulding. In the budget-paint range's bulk set you aren't given any prone
animals!
Merten had two sculpts and the one from the
woodsmen set is the better both having more detail under the splodges of paint
Merten can suffer from and also the slightly more generic clothing allowing him
to herd his sheep pretty-much anywhere in Europe, with any genre of locomotive
running in the foreground.
The TT-gauge figure here is the other
(second issued?) sculpt from Preiser, with N and Z gauges getting the older one
from the HO range. Not the TT set has a ram and the new sculpts, N gets the old sculpts, Z has simplified micro-blobs.
The larger-scales show clearly both newer
sculpts, the one (left, broader hat-brim) ex-Elastolin, the other (right, narrower brim) all new?
Two unpainted sets, one from the bulk sets
issued by Preiser (on the right) in the same 'pure' white polystyrene of
Airfix's 'multipose' which glues so easily and cleanly with liquid-poly, the
more translucent or 'wishy-washy' set on the left was part of the
multi-coloured batch of unknown destination/use we looked at in the long post
the other day.
Known Listing (incomplete):
Merten
? - O Gauge (different sculpts?)Merten
891 - Woodsmen, Forester and Shepherd - HO Gauge
2403 - Shepherd and 18 Sheep - HO Gauge
2403a-d - 4 Sheep - HO Gauge
2403e-i - 5 Sheep - HO Gauge
2403j-m - 4 Sheep - HO Gauge
2403n-r - 5 Sheep - HO Gauge
T891 - Woodsmen, Forester and Shepherd, TT Gauge
N2403 - Shepherd and Sheep, N Gauge
Z891 - Foresters and Shepherd, Z Gauge
Preiser
45116 - Shepherd and farmer lighting pipe (new sculpt) - 1:22.5th Scale
47056 - Ram bleating (new sculpt) - 1:24th Scale
47057 - 3 Sheep (1x3 poses, new sculpts) - 1:24th Scale
47062 - Shepherd's dog (new sculpt) - 1:24th Scale
47100 - Shepherd (new sculpt) - 1:24th Scale
65325 - Sheppard with Sheep (new sculpts with ram), 7 standing, 1 lying plus dog - 1:43rd Scale
160 - Sheppard with flock of 6 - 2 each (old sculpt) and dog - HO Gauge
161 - 15 Sheep, 5 each (old sculpt) of 3 poses - HO Gauge
327 - Larger set of unpainted figures and accessories also containing the contents of a 160 - HO Gauge
4160 - Sheppard with flock of 6 - 2 each (old sculpt, basic paint) and dog - HO Gauge
4161 - 15 Sheep, 5 each (old sculpt, basic paint) of 3 poses - HO Gauge
13003 - Shepherd with Flock, shepherd‘s van, rack wagon and 24 fence elements, each 44 mm long, approximately 80 (new sculpt) pieces - HO Gauge
14160 - As 160 - HO Gauge
14161 - As 161, but 9 each of two (new sculpt) standing poses - HO Gauge
14411 - 60 sheep, 30 each of two (old sculpt) standing poses - HO Gauge
16327 - As 327 - HO Gauge
17601 - Sheppard's van - HO Gauge
75020 - Sheppard with Sheep (new sculpt), 7 standing, 1 lying plus dog - TT gauge
79000 - Railway personnel, passengers, passers-by, workers, animals - bulk unpainted set includes shepherd, dog and double-count of standing sheep (old sculpt) - N Gauge
79160 - Shepherd with flock - including dog and double count of standing sheep (old sculpt) - N Gauge
79252 - Flock of 60 sheep, 10 lying (old sculpt) - N Gauge
88577 - Sheppard with flock of 6 - 2 each of three poses (old sculpt) and dog - Z Gauge (also included in bulk unpainted figures set 88500)
This is how common TT-gauge is in the land of Microsoft...
Where's the offensive TET-gauge or the Pharaohs TUT-gauge?
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