About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Friday, April 24, 2020

F is for Fish'er Eagle!

Following my comment on Moonbase about another item from Eagle (I miss-remembered the page count!) Brian B kindly sent the relevant section from New York of/from whichever Eagle Annual it was, and here it is for everyone else to enjoy as it's literally stuffed with low-cost, old-school, good ideas, some of which I've employed in the past.

Eagle Annual; Eagle Comic; Handy Home Hobby Hints; Model Railways; Modelling; Modelling Guide; Modelling Hints; Partwork; Railway Modelling; Railway Scenics; Scenic Modelling; Vintage Modelling; Walkden Fisher;
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.

Eagle Annual; Eagle Comic; Handy Home Hobby Hints; Model Railways; Modelling; Modelling Guide; Modelling Hints; Partwork; Railway Modelling; Railway Scenics; Scenic Modelling; Vintage Modelling; Walkden Fisher;
'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 . . .

Eagle Annual; Eagle Comic; Handy Home Hobby Hints; Model Railways; Modelling; Modelling Guide; Modelling Hints; Partwork; Railway Modelling; Railway Scenics; Scenic Modelling; Vintage Modelling; Walkden Fisher;
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.

Eagle Annual; Eagle Comic; Handy Home Hobby Hints; Model Railways; Modelling; Modelling Guide; Modelling Hints; Partwork; Railway Modelling; Railway Scenics; Scenic Modelling; Vintage Modelling; Walkden Fisher;
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?

Eagle Annual; Eagle Comic; Handy Home Hobby Hints; Model Railways; Modelling; Modelling Guide; Modelling Hints; Partwork; Railway Modelling; Railway Scenics; Scenic Modelling; Vintage Modelling; Walkden Fisher;
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.

Eagle Annual; Eagle Comic; Handy Home Hobby Hints; Model Railways; Modelling; Modelling Guide; Modelling Hints; Partwork; Railway Modelling; Railway Scenics; Scenic Modelling; Vintage Modelling; Walkden Fisher;
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 . . .

Eagle Annual; Eagle Comic; Handy Home Hobby Hints; Model Railways; Modelling; Modelling Guide; Modelling Hints; Partwork; Railway Modelling; Railway Scenics; Scenic Modelling; Vintage Modelling; Walkden Fisher;
. . . 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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