About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Saturday, December 21, 2024

F is for Future-Past Freight Fleet

Once you have your Space/Airfield, you will need a train, because - as I'm sure we all know - in the future-retro-past of the 1950's, most industrial or commercial hubs of any size had a railway service and/or sidings, before the fall of Dr. Beeching's axe, even funny little places like Tongham, near Aldershot used to have a loading dock and sidings, so it was no surprise that in discussing the transfers Brian had on his Convertiplane (previous post), a liveried Spacefleet railway was revealed!









Shades of Triang's Battlespace, but in a clean 'NASA' aesthetic, and bedecked with the Spacefleet logo, with slightly 1984/Big Brother'esque 'wanted posters' of the Mekon on the wagon ends - know your enemy! Again in his own words and first answering my question about the transfers, here's Brian;
 
"The decals are homemade. The art was scanned from one of the Dan Dare reprint books and lazer printed onto decal film. A while ago, I created a freight train of Spacefleet vans and containers using the same decals . . . Dapol has a small range of undecorated rolling stock. When I found out, I couldn't resist."
 
And while I will often crop/edit images from contributors, even Brian's, I've left these at the full, standard 4x3, as the backgrounds are so interesting and full of stuff, mostly a whole London Bus depot! Which we've seen shots of before, here, with rampaging dinosaurs, I think!
 
Thanking Brian for the above, I thought the army in the background of the Helicar landing platform was well-set, in the same future-past, with late war Cromwell's and Quad's, supporting post-war Saracen's and Saladin's! There's even a matador there, and they soldiered-on for many years, ending up as local garage (service station) wreaker/tow-truck or yard crane conversions, well into my childhood.
 
The cars, which I was equally taken with, Brian explained are the Hot Wheels Dream Mobile, which is a recreation of an earlier 1950's Mattel toy; the Dream Car, a 'space age' or concept car. There's a kingfisher-blue one which might have my name on it, in the near future . . . past?

4 comments:

Terranova47 said...

The army base is my representation of Ingles Barracks home of The Middlesex Regiment at Mill Hill. At the end of a branch line of the Undergrounds Northern Line. In the 50's and 60's while now Territorial Army, many odds and sods were parked there on their way to somewhere else if passing through north London by road.

Hugh Walter said...

I was at Hounslow for a while, and it was a similar story there, but different kit, it was the 1990's!

H

Terranova47 said...

I should have added that The Mekon on the end of a van is the equivalent of a Skull and cross bones indicating danger/poison cargo..

Hugh Walter said...

Frighten the kids into joining the 'Fleet, works for me!

H