M is for More Model Power!

It was when titling the folder for the Model Power HO rack-toys (looked at earlier today) the other day and watching it default to 'Model Power_1' that I knew there was something wrong! I had a hidden 'Model Power' folder in Picasa, with two sets Ed Burg sent me ages ago, so first an apology to Ed for not Blogging them sooner, and second, let's look at them now!

I feel doubly guilty as I believe Ed went out and bought these especially as part of an exchange, I'd mentioned railway figures in passing in an eMail as I'd noticed he was thinning out his Marx and . . . whoever (Aurburn?) in a post on his Blog a few days earlier, then these turned-up! And he's chosen carefully to find two very different but interesting sets.

They are O-gauge or 027, which is a strange railway system where the rolling stock is nominally scaled to 1:64th (even more confusingly - 1:64th is US HO in the die-cast and slot-racing world!), while the figures are scaled to 40mm which is also O-gauge compatible, although strictly 1:45th, usually referred to as 1:48th . . . if I've understood it all right; basically they are O-Guage model-railwy, 40mm figures!

In fact I feel triply guilty as I have an O-Gauge set from ................... in ............. which he sent to the Blog a decade ago and which isn't even in Picasa yet - I keep meaning to do a Preiser versus Merten O-guage post and have never quite got round to it, both boxed are so full it's hard work dealing with one let alone two, and when I did the wagons and things a few years ago I put off the O-stuff!

Set No. 6193 Prisoners (Black & White Stripes); suggests other colour-ways are probably available, and looking at the HO-gauge compatible 'Roco' and Chinatroop sets earlier only reinforces that suspicion. In this style of uniform they are pretty-much 'steam era', but you can re-paint them to any, or your local prison or penitentiary!

All the tropes of a jail or gaol are covered, we have a Hispanic 'gang-banger' doing weights, a guy contemplating his crime with a ball and chain, two guys in a chain-gang (or are they digging a break-out tunnel . . . it's your layout, you decide!), someone waiting to see the governor with his hands cuffed behind his back and a Hannibal Lector type in full chains waiting for supper and a nice Chianti . . . ffth'ffth'ffth'ffth'ffth'ffth!

The other set is also interesting being the modern take on a set which - had it existed forty years ago - would probably once have contained all national postal workers, but which now covers the full gamut of people who come to your door these days.

The figures include a traditional postal worker in blue uniform, a UPS guy in brown, an internet gig'er on moped, a US Mail (?) guy with trolley and an owner-driver in jeans and a T-shirt subbing for a major carrier. You also get a posting 'stand' (pillar-box) and one of those uniquely-American end-of-the-garden-path post/newspaper holders, with the little tin flag (that gets flipped-over if there's something in it) printed on it.

The reverse of the card gives a hint at the range of sets available in this scale/size and the most interesting one is the Santa Land one, clearly designed to do seasonal front lawn or garden (front yard over there) displays of the 'full Griswold' type! But they look familiar . . . however we'll wait 'till Christmas for that one!

And many thanks to Ed for these two.