T is for They're Too Big for My Layout!

As a fillip to this morning's post on the little railway figures Graham Farish carried (or commissioned?) from West & Short (West's Model Railway Accessories), these are some rather dodgy scans of even poorer old Xerox copies of a Corr's catalogue from the early 1950's.

 

Never pretending to be any sort of expert on this stuff, I'll turn to the often maligned JG Garratt, the sum total of his encyclopedia being always far more useful than the amount of (sometimes well-founded) criticism would indicate, and in this case, well worth a re-read;

"Graham Farish Ltd., London (fl.1950-53) A commercial firm which had many interests, model soldiers being in the nature of a sideline. For the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II they commissioned the then hardly-known Russell Gammage and Lieut-Colonel Nicholson to make a series of models which received immediate acclimation. At the same time they commissioned other models, including hussars, Duke of York, a highlander, an officer of the Horse Guards (1821), Bonnie Prince Charlie and military fashions of the 1830s from Nicholson, and a King John from Nibblet, which, however, according to Gammage, was never issued."

Obviously with little interest in model railways, Garratt, has only highlighted the 'figure years', so to speak!

So we can assume these are all the work of Gammage or the Colonel? And definitely no King John! It would be nice to link Nibblet with West's, because of the work he did for Airfix, but the railway figures don't have that facetted wax-sculpt style of the Airfix Cowboys or Combat Group, so we can drop that wish before it takes hold!

 

But, it cements Graham Farish in the Tag-list and introduces Gammage!