Here's a book which needs to be written . .
. a look at all the military train sets and the relationships between them? As
we'll see, this set bears a lot in common with the old Tri-Ang/Hornby 'Battle Space'
sets for instance, and while the modern Model
Power branded, seems to be from older AHM
tooling, so could be Japanese in origin as AHM worked with a lot of
Japanese firms, or Rivarossi from Italy?
Anyway, I haven't got time to do it but I
hope someone does, with the O-guage stuff as well as the HO/OO . . . but I
might make a start in a while, after getting today's post's star!
I bought this HO rated set at Sandown Park
for 30-quid which I thought was a bargain, and although I knew it was a modern
(still in production?) set, I was right as Googling has revealed prices from
$40-loose or incomplete to $250+ for sets, so £30 for a loose train, with no
evilBay global rip-off charges, seems - indeed - to be a bargain.
The locomotive is what I - as a non
American - consider to be a typical, even 'iconic' mid-late 20th century diesel
unit and the caboose (brake van) is equally typical/iconic of its type, here
marked-up as a troop carrier. We'll look at the other two in closer detail.
An Honest
John lookie-likee, which rests on a launcher that bears a resemblance to the
Tri-Ang one; but all in plastic and
with a simpler push-&-click loading action. The real link is the winding
wheel, which mirrors the Battle Space
(and earlier non-Battle Space) Tri-Ang one.
A nice rendition of an M47 which apparently never saw combat service in US hands, but gave
true birth to the M48/60 family, and
here on a flat-car. The chocks are a clip-in single moulding, so could be put
on civil-coloured (oxide-red) rolling stock, but it would probably have to be
the same AHM/Model Power stuff?
In these though we get both closer to the
older British models with an exploding box-car and further away with the huge
rail-gun, while the one in the middle is a Q-car, hiding a nasty, if rather
anachronistic surprise!
I think the mechanism is similar to the UK
one, but mine are in storage, so I can't check them, but I'll try and dig them
out over the weekend, if memory serves this is harder to get and keep together,
but then it doesn't work when you trip the switch! Only falling apart when you
pick it up to reset it . . . doh! And obviously because I only got the rolling
stock, I don't have the track-side trigger, but the Tri-Ang trigger may work, or be made to work?
The 'Q-Car' has two Flak 18/36 German 88mm guns hidden it it! The Tri-Ang version had a twin rocket launcher, but employed the
exploding car mechanism/body, while the Model
Power one has simple (and preferable) click-shut, manually-operated,
drop-down side panels.
While this beast has no comparison in the Battle Space range! It would benefit
from a bit of detailing (stowed stores, hand-rails/guard rails, a breech of
some sort, I've stuck a shell on the loading chute which was kicking around (Airfix or Lone Star SLR bullet?) in one shot. It could also
use some more obvious support wagons than a cabose!
These are fun things and when I'm settled
I'll try to track down some of the other obvious ones (Tyco, Bachmann, even Jakks Pacific) and we'll compare and
contrast, one of them does a loaded Honest
John on a articulated lorry trailer, there's a pricy three-coach Ambulance
train from another and some more realistic ones from Lima, but they are top dollar!
There is also a troop car.i had this set when i was younger,sadly most lost to time.I agree though the Q car was the coolest!
ReplyDeleteI did a bit more digging tsold3000, there's a boxy-fronted diesel loco' too, and flat cars with a truck or two containers, also there's a searchlight wagon, so i have a ways to go!
ReplyDeleteH