T is for Transatlantic Transport

Further to the card/paper bus and tram posts before Christmas, or over Christmas, I think a couple were posted after the big day, Brian Berke sent the bulk of this post, and I found one more when I checked the letter-N and O folders, has I said I would.

 

I don't know if the bad-luck accrued from singing carols out of season applies to card bus models in the same way, nor if it will be Brian or me, who accrues it, but I'm guessing - with the editors hat on - and given he sent them in plenty of time, it will be me! I'm also guessing that MTA is Metropolitan Transit Authority, not much of a guess; it's in plenty of movies! "The perp's taken the Metro downtown, Danno' lost him at 5th and something!"

Brian suspects the black & white aspect has more to do with them getting the Christmas cards out before the colour schemes had been decided upon, for these - then - new, Hybrid fuel/power buses. Brian thinks they might have been free, often these museum (or library) things are?

This is a simple slot together model of a New York subway car, from the Transit Museum, it would make a useful container for hiding stuff from inquisitive siblings, I think? I bet this was free as well, for school-parties and the like?

 

While this is the No. 74 London omnibus, by Best Impressions, one of the best known routes through the heart of London, and known to tourists, from its sliding past Harrods! Brian reports he used to ride it when he was a Londoner! I may have been on it once or twice, but my big one was the 77, riding-up from Clapham to the South Bank, or back again!

 

Close to his heart, so I'll let Brian tell this one . . .

 

" . . . back when Northern Heights, my OO layout was in my head for future building, it was always planned to be the layout I wanted when 10 years old. Back then in the 50's scenic stuff was paper wrapped, cardboard or balsa wood. Plastic kits were a new innovation and since it was always going to be London Transport, I wanted my favourite bus, the Q4 Leyland six wheeled trolleybus. No suitable diecasts back then, but there was a card model by NIMBUS that continued in production into the 90's."

 

These are nice, and also from the Old Country, two craft-museum/group type models, but in a similar style and by the same artist, one Bernard King, and both subjects are trams/trolleybuses, it may be one of these I think we've seen on the Blog in the past made up, there's certainly a few somewhere, and I think I posted them, but we'll look at them again one day, I'm sure!

 

 

This is actually a part of a set, with sides and ends of railway coachs, designed to be made-up over a balsa or boxwood frame, and placed on more substantial 'off-the-shelf' chassis, printed for Hambling's, but probably by a third party as already discussed in the recent railway figure posts.

 

When we were kids (1960's), and we'd occasionally get a train from Winchfield Station, they were usually the new BR blue, but sometimes you'd get a replacement/temporary spare from the Brighton or Guildford-Sussex services which came up from Portsmouth via Basingrad, in this 'old' green, and they were so posh! You sank into the seats, or could trampoline yourself up and down the compartment, shuffle-bum fashion, while all the details were heavy wood, and the compartment doors opened rather than slid, it was a step back in time, for us 'Central South-East' service kids to get proper Southern stock!

 

This shot also reminds me I have a coach-interior card kit somewhere, but it's not Hambling's, I just looked, I'd gone past it looking for the buses, so we'll have that another day whoever it was!

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Finally, from the folders, is this Birmingham Corporation tramcar from Novus in a nice blue and cream.

 

I went and found it! It was Peco! And specifically for/to fit the old Kitmaster model kit range, which were bought by Airfix and sold-on to Dapol, I haven't looked to check if they (the kits) or these card interiors are still in production, but they'll be on the secondary market!