OOO is for Treble-O-Trains . . . or Treble-O-Lectric

Don't Worry, last bit of Lone Star for a while I think, I didn't photograph all of it, just some of the more interesting pieces, the box has gone back-up and I'm on to other things!

I did have my childhood stuff until around 1996, when some friends and I were doing car-boot sales, as much for a laugh as anything else, and I sold the little tin of gray plastic track and non-powered rolling stock along with a few accessories and both pairs of Land-Rover/Citroens (which I do regret!).

The reason for selling them was that I wanted to concentrate on figures, consequently the above carded blister-pack came into the collection a year or two later and it ID'd some loose figures in the 'unknown civilians' zone!

These figures are not much bigger than those Reisler chickens we looked-at the other day!

The fences come in two versions, and earlier version with little 'feet'lettes' that are polyethylene and prone to warping (from new) and a later set with a continuous base in a nylon or polypropylene, which made for more rigid mouldings. The gates are often found with their runners still attached, which makes them look a bit odd, but useable!

Someone did tell me who made them (as sub-contractors) but I didn't note it at the time and either now can't find the email, or it was in conversation? It was one of several plastics firms in the Potter's Bar, Herts/Beds boarder area, I think (one of which; Declon Foam, was owned by Airfix!) and they (the sub-contractor) also made the low-friction wheels (a sort of Bakelite or styrene?) and nylon/polyprop' hitches, for this early N-gauge system.

There are two versions of the telegraph pole too; the older on the right was fed from the little flaps joining the bases, which on the left hand one have been drilled-out and rounded-off by way of blanking, while the resin-feed has moved to the top of the pole where a gate-mark now replaces the extended-pole of the earlier version.

Pure guesswork; but it appears the mold-tool was cut-up/reversed and a new runner/channel added, possibly when injection-moulding machines were upgraded/replaced?

Also a reinforcing flare has been tooled into the bottom of the pole where it joins the base, presumably to stop it snapping-off at that point, something which was probably actually solved simply by changing to the glossy plastic from the older chalkier one? But the whole polymer industry was 'learning on the job' back then!

A separate set contains the trees, a common design, possibly creditable to George Musgrave whose Festival branded fir-trees for Christmas cakes may have pioneered the stacking on a pole, over the plug-and-hole 'domino-stacking' of Merit's trees, but several European railway accessory companies, Marx and others carried similar trees and the first (of either design) is lost in the mists of time.

There are two patterns of each section size (one with 'open' foliage, one 'closed' or thickened) except for the smallest and the tip, each of which has the one version, and there is only room for six sections on the trunk-pole, this gives a little leeway for different appearances of tree to be constructed.

The two I knocked-up are one-of-each 'open' frond (left) and duplicates of the middle-sizes 'closed' (right) to give different looks, the figure give an idea of how small they are and they were probably meant to represent the - now all but extinct - elms which were so common then?