T is for Two - Foreign Minor Makes - HO Railways Figures

Many thanks again to Jon Attwood, as these are all his images, I brightened them up a bit in Picasa, and can add a few points of note, but mostly, just eye candy as we box-tick a couple of the lesser makes, but, if you were a Spanish or Danish railway modeller in the 1960/70's, they wouldn't have been that 'minor' to you, as you feasted your eyes on the display at your local hobby shop, so these things are always relative!

Now Aneste Datank, and offering a basic range of Preiser in their own-brand, as a catalogue box-ticker, originally Dat Ank or Datank (?) are a Spanish railway model maker, who, for a while, under the semi-cold war conditions of being in Franco's Spain, were free to produce knock-off's to their hearts' content!

 

And they seem to have settled upon Walter Merten as the target of their plagiarism, although, the lower set may be old Preiser sculpts? Nevertheless, for metal copies of finely-detailed plastic figures, they aren't bad, quite colourful, and were clearly quite plentiful, as, since Jon sent me these images, I have seen quite a few on evilBay.

 

One is reminded of the efforts of Bermania, from Argentina, but these are a superior finish.

 

While up in the colder, wetter north of the continent, Reisler was producing these in an early Cellulose or glass-like polystyrene. We have actually seen these here before, or something similar, different sculpts, but at the time they were 'unknown' or 'maybe Märklin', now maybe Reisler or maybe Lego! They really only have the heavy bases in common.

While these have no bases, and the farm we also looked at previously here at Small Scale World, have very thin bases? So an odd range of sets, which may be bigger than listed on the Tohan site, until someone ID's those others, we won't know!

Q is for Question Time - Ceremonial

Another question mark, this could be Commerical or homemade, it's hard to tell, as it may have been repainted, if the former, but seems to be a single [white 'styrene] moulding with glued arm, which would be unlike the normal/expected basis of the latter?

I think he's Danish and possibly from a while back, the Oslo Royal Guards can be found wearing these helmets, but only with white trousers as a summer uniform, while with the blue trousers they are usually to be found these days in bearskins, so maybe mid-20th Century 'colonial' style?

W is for Wooden Warriors

I wonder (from the colour of the trousers more than anything else) if these weren't originally intended for, or commissioned by, someone in the Danish tourist industry? However I think I bought them over here, but to be honest I can't really remember when or where they came-in to the collection, just that they probably pre-date my visits to Herne in the 2010's, and wouldn't have been an eBay purchase?

The box is marked 'Taiwan' and nothing else, while it looks like a couple of the figures have 'Foreign' on the base but they are quite tight to the card sides of their shrink-wrapped tray, so that's not clear!

The blue collars and cuffs also point to Denmark rather than Britain and while other countries retain similar bear-skin headdressed ceremonial troops, I can only think of some in white uniforms or the Danes alternate dark (winter dress?) jackets. Also the cross belts are a bit of a giveaway!

A quick comparison with the closest similar figures; on the left is a current wooden guardsman with card arms, I've seen them being sold on feebleBay as cake decorations, but more commonly they are sold by crafters as doll's house's playroom toy soldiers.

The figure to the right is the relatively common Ertzgibirge figure, who would match the Taiwanese ones if they didn't have those large plinth bases! he usually comes one or two figures per little wooden village.

Evidence!

Danish tourist souvenirs?

N is for No Spanish Horses!

But more odds-&- sods of a ceremonial or 'on-parade' nature, indeed the first quartet started life a week or so ago in the same tub as two of the mounted reamsa's and the Argentine Lifeguard look-a-like, so may also be from the collection of Barry 'the legend' Blood, from that 2010 sell-off?

These being they! Two Danish guards from Reisler, in the everyday uniform, the red is the ceremonial, the black for day-in/day-out wear. To their left are two Mignalu plastic Monaco police (Carabineers de Monaco) in their summer dress uniform (they also have a dark version for winter), these are taken from a short experiment by Minot (CGB, not Barry) in Aluminium production back in the 1950's.

My three Athena's, I couldn't begin to explain anything else about them as there seem to be so many variations; red and blue, white and blue, kilts, bloused trousers, pom-poms - large, small and no, single or double 'deputy dog' ears, 'wing-boards' . . . and I must conclude that every regiment has its own uniform, or that several guards have summer and winter versions, there is an excellent book or two on them by Markos Plytos and they should make it clearer, in the meantime - my three are a good mix!

The first four were going to be with the Cavalry, before they expanded and I decided they must go seperately as a 'foot ceremonials' post, off to find the Evzones above, I checked Brian B's folders and found this 80'mil-odd chap, who's from Processed Plastic (thanks to Kent's site)'s US Air Force set.

Which in turn reminded me I had this chap (on the left) in with the unknown navy (or navy-like) figures, looking at him anew I suspect he's actually a chauffeur or doorman from a 1:35th scale car kit - Monogram, MPC/AMT-Ertl, Pyro or Revell? He's in hard polystyrene plastic anyway and someone's tried to glue him down by melting his base!

He - in turn - reminded me there was the other black plastic figure hanging around, seen on the right; he's soft polyethylene and I know nothing about him, I thought he must be Marx or MPC but doesn't seem to be either, has some features in common with the Remco Romans, but is lacking the fine detail seen on their shields, he's close to Marx's 60mm naval cadet marching, but of poorer quality and without the shoulder flap on the Marx figure's greatcoat, and, if it wasn't for the base, you might mistake him for an early experiment by Pater Cole's Replicants!

Anyone know, he seems to be a modern re-issue so I guess somewhere someone has a bucket-full of 'um? To be honest he looks like a neighbouring dictator's guard from the Trigan Empire and seems to be carrying an Elephant Brontosaurus-gun! The gun actually looks to be damaged at the tip, but inspection under a magnifying-glass suggests it's all there? Steam-punk Nazi!??!

ABC, Hong Kong rip-off's of Britains hollow-cast marching troops, they look better en-masse than they do individually!

A mix of French troops marching, seen recently here, but again looking better as a group, and also HK copies, this time cloned from Starlux.

A Salvation Army chap I shot on Adrian's stand years ago and which has been sat in Picasa ever since! I may actually have one myself, but either a different pose or a different flag, and I'm not sure where I put it? He's aluminium and Wend-Al.

A scaler on the left, while on the right - they are all ensconced in their new tub! the HK stuff (ABC/Starlux-copies) have their own tubs!

The cavalry grew to fill two tubs, Reamsa and 'others', and the foot got one of their own. The red plastic Reisler's (which we've seen; Blog passim) will stay with the British guards for now, but as this sample grows and fills a deeper tub, they may migrate across (with the correct paperwork - no illegal's here!), while you can see the lovely RHA chap Chris Smith sent the blog a while back has joined them.

Because PVC can melt polystyrene, the three Greeks and the artilleryman get PE bags, which prevents that kind of damage occurring and provides padding for all the figures in the tub.

News Views Etc . . . Khaki Infantry Page Update

Finally got round to texting-up the latest tranche of images for the Khaki infantry page including the brilliant stretcher comparisons from Chris Smith, the rest of my Reisler along with a shot from the late Dave Scrivener and a Britains 'Hong Kong' shot, which have been sprinkled through the page, with the stretchers given a separate section, as the mortar's already had, but located alphabetically in the 's' slot!

F is for Foreign Fellows on Phut-phuts

Heay, I don't care - anything for an alliterative heading, me!

So soon after the last two-wheeled round-up, but I was re-jigging the garage stuff to make room and found several boxes I was happy to re-acquainted myself with, including the motorcycles box, and so we're back to them with a quick look at some of the larger ones from foreign makers.

Across the North Sea Reisler were turning this out in various guises including civil and police colours as well as the 'Friendly' (with rider) and 'Enemy' (abandoned!) force colours seen here. Made from an early polystyrene, it has a soft, warmness to the touch and a naturally glossy finish, to which they added minimal paint-highlights.

Some Spanish outfit - I'd better not try ID'ing them in case it says something else in TJF's bookie-wook, leading him to another on-line rage'gasm. In the shot bottom-right, you can see the holes present in all machines for a side-car, and both variants seem relatively common, sharing the swoppet elements of figures by Manuel Sotorres with the moveable arms also seen on the smaller figures from Torres Maltas, this rider though has more in common with the larger output credited to Juguetes Teixido . . . damn! Committed myself . . . helmets on!

From the land of Uncle Sam came this rather nice machine, sans rider, a Harley' or an Indian? Milwaukee steel-horse anyway! Made by Pyro as part of their dime-store military range and also included in some of the larger 'big-box' sets, it never had a rider as far as I know and was out of scale (larger) than most of the other vehicles in the range.

Covering Germany from Italy, comes this crude'ish sculpt which can be taken as a BMW R75 or Zündapp KS 750 due to the front forks being an accurate rendition of neither!

The Atlantic figures are stiff and the machine is chunky, and I think my back-seat may be a battlefield modification from an anti-aircraft mounting . . . you can't win 'em-all! This is a later issue in a leery colour, probably from the blister-packs with collector stickers.

From 'Chye-Nah' as the Orange Loon refers to them; comes a modern road-bike/tourer type with 3-spoke alloy wheels, a camouflage paint-job and convoy/escort beacon. New Ray's is a lovely model but the equally well sculpted (yet rather over-burdened - given his storage pannier's size!) rider cannot be made to hold the diminutive handle-bars which is a pain and something which should have been sorted-out at the production stage; maybe he's from another machine?

A few more shots of the New Ray pairing!

Warh! Err . . . Well . . . , this isn't foreign, what's it doing in this post? Someone must have sneaked it in here to advertise another post? Ah! That's it; check this out . . . Airfix, don't you know!

T is for That's That Bloke From May! The One With The Magnet!

Did you spot it earlier?

I'd done all the photo's, all the image editing and most of the blurb, when I thought "He looks familiar, but he's not quite Dinky? Hold on; I've thought that before . . .?" I thought! Dug the old pictures out and sure enough . . . he's now in the Reisler tub!

Confirmation shot! The farm hand from Riesler was the figure used on that magnetic rubber advertising premium we saw a while back, from a Formeta. And; while I had found several Formeta's, none of which matched the logo, I seem to recall one or more were from the Low Countries?

Where Reisler clearly had contacts - if not an active sales team - providing these (not uncommon) carded-sets for Bois Manu (a furniture and shop-fitting design house exhibiting at the Expo '58 World's Fair in Brussels) in Belgium. Clearly a tourist keepsake, similar to the stuff you found in London from Timpo or Cavendish, but smaller; these are all 40mm.

 From the left

Flight attendant; traffic cop; police detective/Gendarme (?); motorcycle patrol-man; ceremonial Guardsman and a 'Red Cross' nurse.

From the left

Belgian Bois Manu Export figure; Danish version (both that softish but soluble polystyrene Reisler used), then three polyethylene (PE) figures; Danish policeman, 'Friendly Force' dispatch-rider; 'Enemy Force' dispatch rider.

D is for Diminutive Danish Dirt-diggers!

That's 'farmers' to you . . . sometimes the alliterative titles don't work properly, blame the pink-monkey on the keyboard!

When I posted Reynolds' HR Products a while back now, I said I had in the past wondered if they were Reisler and that I had a few more in storage, well, I had a disappointing one in storage! So I won't be doing a follow-up to them for the foreseeable future; in the meantime, here are the Reisler ones instead!

Typical boxed-set includes everything you would need for a little scene or a couple of vignettes on your model railway layout, in this case pigs being 'mucked-out' and a cow being milked while granny looks-on from a bright red bench!

My loose samples hint at at-least four other sets; horse, cow and chicken-based, along with a a pack of fencing? There is a website with all of them, which I'll post a link to at the end of this post when I upload it, on Monday.

At a true European HO 'scale', those chickens are shorter than cooked grains of rice, but about twice the height, and not as small as Noch's N-gauge cats!

The fencing got marbled production with the colour-mix differing from batch to batch. I also have a rather fine bull but I didn't do any comparison shots for the Airfix page, I'll try to do some in a day or two?

All Reisler on the right; you can appreciate from the left-hand shot how small those chickens are! That's it; Reisler's HO Collectors Series farm - box ticked.

Link - You have to click on 'HO', then 'Sortimenter' and possibly 'Figuroversigt' but that doesn't seem to do anything?

L is for Latecomers!

I was sorting the 'my pictures' folder the other day and found several folders which weren't registering in Picasa, they can drop-off for various reasons (renaming all the images [in the folder] will cause it to disappear [from the screen] in Picasa!), although it's usually if the containing-folder is moved, which occasionally happens by accident.

One of the folders was from the Guards mini-season back in 2012/2013? And it's that one we'll look at now, it's odd that A) I didn't notice they weren't Blogged at the time and B) has three random images of other figures, in with what are mostly the Timpo/Toyway variants?

Timpo/Toyway; oldest at the top, question marks at the bottom. And from the top, they are; first version better paint, a pair of simpler paint and the SLR Shoulder-Arms pose from the second version, the officer placed mid-way as his paint, being different is harder to place.

Then the rest of the second type with two officers, one having gold collar and epaulettes, the other black. Below them are four first version, re-issued in PVC and fine-painted as a third version by Toyway, and below them are some cruder ethylene or polypropylene 'bits' which I assume are Toyway, but whether they came before or after the PVC ones I don't know, they may be test-shots, especially the blue officer? French Guards . . . unthinkable!

The paint difference between the first versions is limited to gold paint on the collar/epaulettes of those with the earlier bases.

The other comparison is between the second versions SLR's, now I genuinely don't know if Timpo did a brown and black version, or if the brown ones are only from Replicants, who I believe did produce some. As Replicants use a grade of polyethylene very similar in properties to that used by Timpo, would you even know the difference? Ours were black when we were kids, but I've seen more brown ones in recent years!

A Toyway blister-card of these came-up on evil-feeble-feeBay a while ago and they went for a pretty penny to a bit of a bidding 'war', and why wouldn't they; they are arguably the best version, faces are a bit pale, but more realistic for being so, the PVC is hard-wearing, and they are painted to a high-standard with proper PVC-paint which takes a lot to remove.

The Attention pose's legs though are wrong for a Royal Salute, the twos being in-line, either they are the officers Attention legs, or Toyway had a new pair knocked-up? In fact - looking at the boots; they have used the second version legs with first version bodies for the whole set!

And second version bearskins with first-version heads? Bases are the mid-era one with a Timpo Toys cartouche in the centre. But the three 'odds' at the bottom of the big line-up shot shows first-version legs, so Toyway had them both?

These three shots were also in the folder, and yet I'm sure we saw most of them in the thematic posts at the time, so I don't know what I was playing at, but it may be a clue as to why the folder disappeared, moving stuff around?

On the left is a Charbens drummer, sans-drum! As the drum was missing from PW's in their recent excellent tome on the subject of Charbens; I'm guessing I'll have more luck looking for rocking-horse shit? Thinks . . . I might have a khaki-green drum with two studs close-together somewhere, could that be it? Or am I thinking about something I saw in someone else's stock - blue and white painted edge and red rope-work VɅVɅV's painted over, if the memory has any merit? But those studs were square . . . I'm thinking of the Herald Hong Kong one aren't I? Or even a copy . . . Doh!

Then we have a 'Brass Section' shot which avoided the Brass Section post back then, the two Reisler's (one with the gurt-big sousaphone!) were probably PW purchases the previous year? While I'm sure we saw the Cherilea 60mm and Lone Star trumpeter at the time?

That's it for today and probably a late post tomorrow.

L is for Long-Ladder on Lego's Leery Little Lorry

From their small range of HO gauge compatible vehicles which as far as I know weren’t stolen from Hestair Kiddycraft (unlike their accompanying construction bricks) and which come fitted with die-cast metal wheels!

360° Telescoping, Turntable Ladder Truck.

Thanks to Adrian Little for letting me photograph it.

G is for Guards - Tubas

I don't know which of these is a Tuba and/or a euphonium or even a 'Keiserbass', whether they are sevens or what! To me they are all tubas...

My only Britains Eyes Right, along with both the Cavendish musicians (Stadden designs - the pair!).

I handle these as little as I possibly can as a mate of mine had three in a little box we found while sorting his things out once, and as I picked one up, it literally exploded, except that most of the pieces fell into my lap, only the head disappearing across the room, so it was more of a violent implosion. Anyway, the plastic had become highly unstable and seemed to be in compressive tension! Inspection of the other two had the same result, there was no squeezing, they just couldn't be handled, and the fear is these two will go the same way...

From the left Cherilea 60mm, Reisler Danish Guard, Cavendish again and five treatments of the Crescent/Crescent for Kellogg's figure.

Charbens 'don't know (?)', Charbens early type, Charbens late type and Charbens early type mould shrink. The last one my be a mould-shrink of the first figure, that being a different cavity of first type?

Another Reisler Danish Guardsman with a different kind of large brass instrument and the Britains Eyes Right chap with another! Both the Reisler's in this post are recent styrene polymer reissues, the earlier - painted - ones can be in a cellulose acetate.

Now known to be Sousaphones, invented in America and part of the Britains 'Eyes Right' US Marine Band sets.

G is for Guards - Standard Bearers

From the left; a Hong Kong, PVC (with ethylene base and head) copy of Britains Herald, a Timpo 'solid' with moving arm, a Reisler polystyrene Danish Guard and a massif lump of lead which I assume is a home-casting...or very minor make!