L is for Layouts and Little People!

There were quite a few figures in the huge box of mostly animals Jon Attwood sent recently, and we're looking at the smaller-scaled stuff in this post. Of interest as my intention is to get some model-railway stuff posted over Christmas, because it's a long time since we looked at any of it in any depth, and the last time we did, it was all that Preiser/Merten stuff, which won't feature this time round!

A late ('yellow' pull-off lid) box of Airfix Platform Figures was stuffed with small scale . . . err . . . stuff! And this is me sorting it into piles! Most of it is grist-to-the-mill stuff you wouldn't want me to go through pile by pile, but what can you spot - the image enlarges quite big, but a little pixel-fuzzy.

 

Some highlights from the previous though; the paratrooper is from a parachute-plane kit, but I can never remember which is which, as there are more than one with a figure, one is Airfix, another Monogram I think, which may be this one? Then a Blue Box German throwing  grenade over a damaged, but rather fine (Edwardian?) board-game piece, to his US oppo', while another of my favourite little Hong Kong cowboys charges into the fray!

 

Faller scenic sets, these are the really useful sets of 'bits', rather than specific kits, and I well remember those coin-operated railway dioramas at mainline and terminus stations in Germany having the contents of 973 stacked round the two cottages under construction, which would be made to look on fire with blackened timbers, cotton wool, hidden red and yellow grain-of-wheat bulbs &ect . . . so the fire equipment of Roco, Preiser, Herta, Praline and/or Wiking could be given something to do, for a feature in one corner of the layout!

 

A lovely sample, of samples, of metal railway figures, both bigger name and after-market, old and new'ish. Jon has also sent images, and I have also had both a photography and scanning sessions, so there will be intermittent posts on some of this in December, all going well.

 

We looked at these years ago, they were samples from a dodgy outfit in China/US/Germany, and Mike Niederman confirmed Tomolio's suspicions they were Presier copies, but fun nevertheless, as figure collectables, and seen here in what looks to be OO- and O-gauges. Upper shot is duplicate poses in the two sizes, lower shot are colour variations of the OO figures.

 

Hong Kong knock-offs of Merit/Randall scenery, with the white stuff attributed to Blue Box and through their Sunshine lable, Marx!

 

Jon also sent this for a very interesting advert on figures from a maker I only knew from their similar ad's in the military modelling press, where they were promoting 1:90 or 1:100th NATO recognition models of Cold War armour! All for the forthcoming posts on Railway figures!

Thanks again to Jon, for all this, which is already proving useful and will continue to do so for years to come. You know, everything which you physically have in the 'stash', is something you don't have to search for, at some point in the future, to feed blog articles or illustrate points!