A is for Airfix, at Last!

A difficult one, as Airfx have their own pages, but so far only the two 'standard' figure sets, I will get round to the kit figures one day, and two of these images will be duplicated over there in the next day or so, as they are the only images I have, but as part of this walk through railway figures we seem to have embarked-upon, almost by accident in December (or earlier?), here's a few Airfix bits.

An early advertisement for the railway accessory range, in the model railway press, showed what I suspect is the two figures from the Scammell Scarab / 'Mechanical Horse' (we looked at recently), but they don't look exactly the same, and while I've not seen figures in the crane kits, or mentioned as being with it, in the catalogues (and Airfix tended to make a feature of included figures, with their kits), it must be remembered that they dropped the figures in the Control Tower kit at some point, so it's not unheard of for them to have had figures in a kit and then not had them! Anyone know for certain?

 

AHM (Associated Hobby Manufacturers - a marketing co-op and importer) carried Airfix for a while in the 'States (before the invention of USAirfix), and here is one of their catalogue images for the Station Accessories, basically it's the colour image from the Airfix eighth, and some subsequent catalogues, rendered in Black & White!

 

Having seen the rarer Triang 'Rocket' crew the other day courtesy of Jon Attwood, here's a scan of an old photograph of my Airfix crew, they are actually in a bright lemon yellow polymer, but have got a bit browned in the image. As a series one window-box, always a colourful point among all the white, silver and grey 'plane kits and khaki AFV's.

 

I have a note, somewhere in my files, that Märklin (or Bing? Someone like that) had a set of Victorian/Wilhelminian passengers and crew (probably lead) in an approximately HO-gauge compatible size, with their contemporary tin-plate Adler (eagle) locomotive and carriages.

 

The - probably - Hong Kong copies, which have been mentioned in passing, once or twice in the last month or two, I don't know for certain that they are a Hong Kong thing, but they are quite crude copies, note the rounded-corner undercut bases. Airfix have the split-line of a two-part mould tool, across the base underside, I think these have a third baseplate insert, but I'll have to check the figures before I say so with certainty.

 

A hard styrene, in an off-white/ivory colour, they might be European copies, for a premium set or something, but I think Hong Kong is safer for now? And another scan of an old photograph, which, while I thought that they were already up, over on the Airifx page, they weren't, so I'll copy this and the AHM images over there, forthwith!