I have made wire trees, I haven't made an
eight-foot length of railway-cutting! I suspect (well, let's be honest, due to
some clues in the text I 'assume') the 'piece' is a collecting-together of
twelve weekly or monthly parts, and I have a tatty set of the pages somewhere
in the archive, but Brian's are very clean.
'Strip wood' . . . from a time before the
invention of Plastruct or styrene-rod
or '20-thou' sheets! I've had a stab at wire fences, matchstick corrals and
paneling from old weathered ply as mentioned the other week in a News,
Views . . .
This was the page I remembered the most, as
I was never convinced the colour 'target' would be anything more than a rather
psychedelic target! Compare the roof drawings with those of Terry Wise in his Introduction to Battle Gaming if you're
lucky enough to have the latter.
Part two of the lake and you start to see
how it could work if you airbrushed the 'target' and used a dark blue textured
glass, or some glass-paint (which I have some bottles of somewhere, probably
contemporary with these drawings, but the lids have been stuck-on for the
40-odd years they have been in my possession, so not much use except for
purposes of nostalgia!
While the cabins would look good in a Wild
West scenario?
If you do four instead of two and butt them
to the edges of the cover-plates in pairs you'd have an equally convincing
box-girder bridge? The 'American' design is equally good for post-war Europe
where so much infrastructure was lost during the hostilities these simple,
utilitarian, 'post-modern' types (often pre-formed concrete 'kits') were
common.
I tried the barrels . . . made a complete
pigs-ear of it, although I think the 'best one' survives somewhere in the
stash! I had more success with the coal-load, and you can also do tarpaulin
covers by putting the paper over the outside, and folding the ends across
(after cutting to an oblong) like a parcel. Once you've folded and before you
glue, attach button-thread to 'tie-down' the corners.
In fact these days you could print-out
GC-overprinted 'private owner' branded tarp's?
I also have (from some dodgy auction lot) a
whole load of crafted telegraph poles like those illustrated, in spot-soldered
steel rod and wire and I think many of the early model-railway shops would have
a half-a-stab at commercialising this kind of thing, once they'd got a jig set
up (holding/placing pins in a piece of balsa or boxwood), they could produce
identical units quite quickly?
Notice also; to the left of the telegraph
poles . . .
. . . the clever moniker of the artist;
Walkden Fisher. . . and the driver of this post's title!
Many thanks to Mr Berke for this blast from
the past, it always brings back memories to flick-through these, the annual
from which they are taken was all I had to read during a period of childhood
illness/bed-rest . . . flu or something?
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