B is for Biggles in the Drink!

I loved Biggles . . . to begin with . . . no, I was always a fan, but having found him in WWI with his mates Algy and Ginger (there was another one wasn't there? I've forgotten him!), flying string-bags over the trenches of Flanders, I did get a bit annoyed to find him apparently the same age in South America fighting Luftwaffe Condor's operated by some despotic mate of Batista, like, err . . .Tin-Tin, and then again, a few years later, still the same age in WWII!

But this isn't about me, Brian Berke was also a fan of Biggles, and his abiding fandom gave rise to the mini-diorama we looked at a while ago, to which this is a follow-up, to give an idea of how it was built. I'm also hoping to post a video, which will be a first for the Blog, as I'm editing this at home the day before, if there's no video, it didn't work!

Groundwork/formwork for the volcanic atoll/caldera is first built-up from layers of expanded polystyrene packing material.

Test-placing elements, an Airfix kit and a rubber squid (or is it a cuttlefish - they're real mean fuckers, they really are, barbed-torpedo for a tongue which fires-out like a chameleon's!) take centre-stage in the lower depths of the cone.

While up above the railway buildings went through a generation or two before Brian was happy with them, and I think the final hut was a better choice visually than the Nissen hut, although those Hong Kong Nissen huts have their uses and this is the first I've seen with window-stickers.

The pirate ship actually belongs to the vinyl villain with the vast vat of vino we saw here on the 19th of the month and you can see how the trees were sparser at one point.

Coming together now, and that's not three 'explorers', it's Biggles, Ginger and Algy! Brian forgot the other one too, clearly he wasn't very memorable . .  probably wore a red pajama top!

H is for Hidden Hideaway Harassed by Horrible Harpy

Brain Berke sent me another of his dioramas, this one is not as sombre as the subject matter of his returning 'little ships', and I love it . . .

It's an old volcanic caldera, with sea access, a beach, a railway, a shelter made out of a pirate-ships living quarters and a signalman's hut - for the railway; of course! It has a small jungle, a jerry-built jetty, a set of steps (from an Airfix signal-box?), a float-plane and err . . . a bloody great octo'squid killer-monster on the attack!

Airfix provides the adventurers using the base from its Australian Infantry set, and they are responding to the threat. I think this is charming . . . it needs rolling stock though, perhaps Hornby-Triang's small crane, to lift treasure to safety, or to drop blocks of pumice, or palm-tree trunks on the octo'squid, or just hook it like a giant cat-fish!