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?

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!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

 

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!

U is for Update - Scarabs

This is not me throwing-up a spurious post to get closer to the target total, I've four days to get up 7 posts, which is quite doable, and I've been promising myself bed for the last two hours!

 

But rather, I added an image to the Scammell post later yesterday, then about an hour or so ago, I found the old Merit box scans, so added them, and I've just added another Peco image, so if you are a fan of that particular mechanical horse, it's about four posts down the page, with double the images originally published.

Or here;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2023/12/s-is-for-scammells-scarabs-scammell.html

S is for Scammells, Scarabs, Scammell Arabs and Mechanical Horses!

Mentioned in a comment by Jon a few days ago, I had half these in the queue, and quickly took a couple of scans to complete the post! The Mechanical Horse from Scammell, introduced in 1934, was a tree-wheeled lorry (truck) designed for 'short-haul' delivery around a station's goods depot, within the usually adjacent industrial estate, or the wider town, with narrow ways and limited movement a priority, or for moving goods around the busy yard of one of those industrial premises.

 

The 1948 upgrade was known as a Scammell Arab (the best [mechanical] horse!), quickly shortened to Scarab (because it looks more like a beetle that an Arab stallion?!!), which in turn became shorthand for all version of the three-wheelers!

This was the best version for many years, a ready-made model, with flatbed trailer and load - an early model of shipping container, from Merit (J&L Randall), this was actually in one of the older show-report posts, which, as it's all back in 2021 now and beyond relevant as an 'H is for...' type post, I will cannibalise to get a few posts out of it, for the targets!

 

The four main components, Merit also offered most other combinations, with three seperate kits of the lorry, trailer and container, or similar ready-made combinations. Although I think the kits were in the same oxide-red plastic?

 

This colour-scheme is known as Blood and Custard, and represents the British Rail road transport fleet of my early childhood before the all-yellow's of Red Star, NCL and suchlike, and you can see how having such a curved 'prow' meant the vehicles could enjoy tighter turning circles.

 

Langley, who we looked at earlier today, do both the Mechanical Horse (top right) and the Scarab, bottom left, with at least three configurations currently on their website, and various compatible trailers.

 

Airfix offered this for a short while, before dropping it from the catalogues for years, only for it to reappear as a Dapol item, after some Philistines at General Mills, Palitoy or Heller offloaded chunks of the mould bank, where it had mouldered for all those years!

 

Dapol 5th Edition catalogue shot.

 

As Dapol only added it to later catalogues (it's still available), it seems it either needed work, or took a while to find among the other tooling?

This Peco advert' used to be on the back of a lot of model railway magazines and shows Merit accessories with the Peco LK codes, the Scarab is for illustrative purposes, it's not included in the set, and I don't think it was ever offered by Peco with an LK code? I think the missing word is 'essential'?

 

I then found three scans of the box in the 'everything Merit' folder down the bottom of Picasa, where they've been sitting patiently since November 2021!

 

And in another Peco advert as a Merit-coded model.

D is for Dapol

This is just a quick box ticker to get the stuff up here, I have a lot of Dapol stuff in storage with header cads and suchlike, but as a quick box ticker, this will have to do!

An early catalogue shows the same Hong Kong sourced PVC figures that Hornby, possibly Thornton and Lifelife I think have carried in the last 20-40 years at one point or another.

 

 

Later catalogues carry the imagery of the sets they seem to have inherited from Airfix, with the bases being changed from small squares and oblongs to landscaped (or lumpy) 'cloud' bases.

They also carried the Station Accessories, but in the same soft cream-white polyethylene as Airfix, and as the set seems to have become harder to find in recent years, the suspicion is they only obtained back-stock of Airfix production and have slowly used that up?

 

The three sets with a few other ex-Airfix kits in a later catalogue.

 

When redesigning the bases, Dapol also added their own corporate marks to the old Airfix tools, meaning they are now, indisputably Dapol product!

Example of the Dapol runner, complete, they tend to sell three runners in a set, passengers or workmen, and being polystyrene kit plastic can be remodelled or converted with relative ease!

Dapol are still going despite the bad luck of past works-fires and the BBC's underhand pulling of the Dr Who licence, just before announcing they were bringing the time-traveller back. These are the current shots of painted-up sets on/from their website;

https://www.dapol.co.uk/

M is for Model-Land and Minic Motorways

The same 'definitive' source that miss-identified the Husky figures as Triang Model-land had clearly never met these, these are the real deal as old orange-skin 'Lovejoy' would say! Still - if you're busy rushing around the internet nicking other peoples images, you're not going to have time to correct any errors are you, not even typo's on the images your lifting from!

Quite hard to find outside of the model railway collecting fraternity, they came in two packaging types, these Model-Land blister-cards and in blue and white header-carded bags with the Minic Motorways labelling.

As far as mint examples go; I only have the two carded sets, and one of them is in a bit of a state! The children set is as good as anything Prieser or Merten produced and - indeed - are easily mistaken for Merten with the little round bases, but the distinctive Stadden sculpting should be the give-away.

A few loose ones, some have been covered in a protective varnish-dip, popular with railway modellers in the 1970's as it made it easier to dust them with a paint brush. Also a seventh child-sculpt has been surgically removed from the woman in blue.

Listing;

RML.8 Accessories (Horse Trough, War Memorial, Country Stile, Inn Sign and Village Stocks)

RML.70 Pedestrian Figures Set (Man running, 3 male and 1 female standing Passengers and woman with child on single base)
RML.71 Workmen Figures Set (3 road-workers, bin-man, sweep and deliveryman)
RML.72 Child Figures Set (6 children - rope, kite, hoop, 2 playing leapfrog and one in school uniform)
RML.73 Urban Figures Set (2 policemen, burglar, school-crossing 'Lollipop' man, window cleaner and security guard - or pilot?)
RML.74 Industrial Workers Set (Postman, milkman, gardener, 2 decorators and a cleaner)
RML.75 Road Workmen Set (5 workers and a driver)

The set RML.8 is included over and above the other building and scenic accessory sets as it was to reappear as an issue from Dapol...which means it might have had a run under the Airfix banner? I'll have to check.

Set 73 is the one that causes the problems for definitive-listers, as it contains a policeman and school-crossing operator similar to the Husky sets, however the former are exquisitely sculpted by Charles Stadden, almost certainty from the Minimodels plant in Havent, while the later are lumpen blobs of poly-vinyl from Hong Kong.

(PS - do you get confused between Ian McShane's fictional Lovejoy and David Dickinson's er...David Dickinson? Fact versus fiction - wow! And the false one came first, what's that all about...give him a Volvo and you wouldn't be able to tell the difference!)

Bernard Taylor has emailed me with corrections to the listing and some more shots (you may recall he included some Triang figures in the 'quiz' shot and another contribution the other day), there is enough for a whole post rather than adding it here, so I'll sort that out in the next few days - exams allowing.

07/10/2012 - Full update and extra images now posted HERE

D is for Kaleds...and Davros, Doctor...Dapol?

Pre-Scriptum...I love Daleks (from behind the sofa), but I increasingly hate the BBC. So, a bit later than I had hoped, here is the Dalek/Dr. Who round-up I mentioned in the autumn. There are a few thanks due on this one, thanks to the Philosophical Toad for A) sending me the earlier Dalek and Cyberman from the Doctor Who Adventures Magazine and B) telling me about the later ones and thanks also to Bill from Moonbase for sending me the white-metal Doctor and a lose Citadel Miniatures Dalek and Cyberman in sand plastic. These are about the same size as real life relative to each other, but there is a poorer quality line-up lower down for a definite scale/size comparison. From Left to right - top to bottom; 3 Marx 'Rolykins' Citadel Miniatures Kit 2 Character Options Daleks Doctor Who Adventures magazine Dalek, earlier version (maker unknown...Toad? Still got the card?) Premium World Dalek, later version (Doctor Who Adventures magazine) 2 Fisher Price/Strawberry Fayre board-game pieces 2 Product Enterprise Daleks Cherilea 'Swoppet' Dalek Premium World 'Dalek Slime' container (Doctor Who Adventures magazine) Henbrandt 'Build Your Own' Dalek (Doctor Who Adventures magazine)

Bottom shows a comparison shot between the two types of 'Rolykin'. When Product Enterprises first announced these in the...err...(quickly checks the boxes!)...late 1990's! I remember the collecting and Sci-fi press waxing lyrical about the return of Rolykins and other lapped-up bumpf from the toy companies PR department, but they were in fact quite different, first the base was rather too heavy (Boo!), but yet!...the detail was much better (RAY!!), although they were very pricey for such a small toy (Boo!), something to do with the amount of packaging I don't doubt! However the Entertainer chain of toy shops in the South-East would remainder each range for almost no money after it's 'run' and if that moment happened to occur as I visited the store I'd pick one up, so managed to get 4 from - I think - 2 series (RAY!) They are shown in the middle shot, left to right; 1st is a chrome plated 'movie' Dalek in silver, then the gold movie Dalek followed by the Dalek Invasion of Earth Limited Edition; Dalek with Sensor Dish Black / Classic Dalek and finally a Special Weapons Gunner Dalek. The convoy lights/horns are the main way of telling them apart, the first series had short ones, the second series had long ones. The full range would seem to be thus; 1999 Dr Who and the [TV] Dalek Rolykins (short lights on head) - Drone (Blue) - Imperial (White) - Supreme (Red) - Emperor (Gold) - Command (Black) - Battle (Pale Blue) - Darlek Invasion of Earth Limited Edition; Dalek with Sensor Dish Black / Classic Dalek 2000 Dr Who and the Movie Dalek Rolykins (long lights) - Blue/silver head - Black - Red - Silver/blue head - Gold Chrome-plated Limited Editions - Gold - Silver - Cherry Red 2000 - Others - Special Weapons Gunner - Incubating Dalek - Davros Rolykin The top photograph shows some of the other Marx Rolykins, Batman and Robin - having clearly eaten all the pies - are pretending not to see the Dalek threatening Earth... "What was that noise Robin, that noise that sounded like a Dalek threatening Earth?" "Farting-fireworks Batman! I think it was an auto-exhaust backfiring" "Yes, That'll be it, let's move over there a ways, I think I saw a Kebab-van go round the corner" Meanwhile - Lenny the Lion (I think he was called Lenny? Not having the web here as I write this, nor having time to look it up before I upload it later this week you'll have to Google it yourselves!) our 1966 Savior intends to give the Dalek a good old British drubbing with a Milbro orange-plastic World Cup football! "Exterminate That! You shriveled-prune in a colander! Three-nil, threeee-nilll threenil....." It must be said however, that despite the vast sum these change hands for, boxed, at shows or on FeeBay, the body is still the most accurate representation of a badminton shuttle-cock in the toy world. There may be others to find, gold, blue or yellow?

The rather fuzzy 'sizer' top left, construction of the Fisher Price board-game Dalek, the lump of metal in the base often comes loose and rattles around inside these - now - quite old models and similar break-down of the Chrilea Dalek. Finally the 30mm white metal Doctor sent to me as part of a swap by Bill at Moobase. I think it's John Pertwee in his foppish Victoriana, but Bill thinks it's [someone else I can't remember and can't find the email and I've got 3 minutes to finish editing this so maybe he'll tell us who it was!?] any other votes?. The Fisher Price Dalek is a classic example of the madness of collecting vis-a-vis dealers. This game, or the lose pieces always fetches a pretty penny at collectors auctions or toy shows, yet turns up at car-boot sales almost as often as Kadgagoogoo 12" singles, for pennies. it was issued by Strawberry Fayre for a while before the Fisher-Price re-branding and may have had a Mattel label as well, ran for a fair few years and sold by the bushel. The only problem is the automated Maginot Line cupolas in place of a Dalek head! As both companies also issued the Dad's Army board game with cardboard flats of the main characters, it may be that Strawberry Fayre were the licensing 'arm' of Fisher Price, until corporate image became all in the 1980's and it no longer served to have separate labels in-house?

The Citadel/Games Workshop bits, strangely for a company that has spent the last 34 years turning 22mm into 32mm by half-millimeter increments these were almost too small! and are the smallest on show here today. But perfectly formed! I hadn't the heart to take the sand ones off the sprue, as the grey ones had come freed from the card anyway at some other time, so it was brilliant when Bill sent me a couple. Next question; do I risk stripping the paint off the Cyberman or wait for an unpainted one to turn up? The excess stock of what seems to have been a unpopular line (as part of the GW oeuvre, yet now having quite a cult status) was cleared in the bag shown, and some were kicking around a dealers stall at Andy Harfields show a few years ago, where I got the loose one.

All the recent stuff from the BBC's Doctor Who Adventures off-shoot. Various companies supply the giveaways/premiums and you do have to be quick to get them, this - in an age of failing/short-lived kid's magazines - is usually sold out within a day or two, well it is round here! Known lines (all shown bar the orange one which is only in the group photo's above) Issue No. 98 - Cybermen (x5, approximately 25mm, grey) Issue No. 99 - Daleks (x5, approximately 20mm, original type, gold) Issue No. 170 - Dalek Soldiers (x5, approximately 30mm, new type, orange) Issue No. 183 - Dalek Slime [container] (approximately 45mm, new type, green) Issue No. 186 - Build-your-own Dalek kit (approximately 54mm, new type, black & white) Issue No. 203 - Dalek Army (as No.170, but 17 ‘Fat'lek’ Daleks in 5 colours) Issue No. 204 - 16 Mini Monsters/Monster battle Pack (8 Cybermen - as No.98; 8 Sontarians) Issue No. 205 - Dalek Pencil Set (4 ‘Fat'lek’ pencil-toppers) Issue No. 211 - Dalek Slime (reissue of 183) Issue No. 223? - Build-your-own Dalek kit (reissue of 186, red/black, Xcel Concepts) Issue No. 224? - Dalek Slime (reissue of 183/211) Issue No. 229 - Dalek (or other?) Micro-figure (from Character Options) + mini ‘Dr Who’ note pads Issue No. 237 - Weeping Angel Army (16 figures [8x2 poses] in PVC/vinyl; HMA + collector card pack) Issue No .238 - Monster Battle Pack (6x each; HMA Cybermen and Sontarans; 5 Daleks, each of a different colour) Issue No. 241 - 16 Glow-in-the-dark Who Shapes (Some items of use as approximately 60mm ‘Flats’) Issue No. 254 - Mini Monster Army (8 Judoon and 8 Ood) Issue No. 255 - Mini Monster Army (8 Silence and 8 Silurians)

When the Philosophical Toad first mentioned the new design, I thought she was just having a go at the crap modeling of the orange miniatures against the gold ones from the year before, but have since realised that - as part of their determined effort to dumb down the whole country and lose the license fee - the retards at the BBC have built a 'new' Dalek (I guess it was part of a story-line?) which has lost both the Battleship-prow of the original and the 'Soldiers-spine', and in so doing has lost its meanness, its menace, in favour of some PC fluffiness, all roundy-cornered and not so nasty?? If something's not broke...don't try to fix it! As Batman & Robin have eaten all the pies, I guess the Cyberman has been at the cakes?

...[Wane Slob at his babies Christening] "It's not a Buy'bee it's a cayke, Jewanna'piece Vicka'...aw'riot if we cum back next wayke?"

A selection of the Character Options micro-figures, like most of this new production, it starts life hideously over-priced (for what it is), and after a set shelf-life gets cleared for a few pence. Sainsbury's were selling-off the 3-figure sets when we moved here (autumn 2008) for 99p and Toys-r-Us shipped-out the 5-figure sets and ships for a similar mark-down. Way-way-back in the Dark Times, when Dr. Who fans kept their little magazines going with monthly calls for Dr. Who to be resurrected, and the Bloody Bastard Corporation kept saying "No, no plans, no demand, kids/times have changed, ran its course" etc...etc...ect...ad. nauseum, there was a little company in South Wales called Dapol, who fed the fans with a small range of Dr. Who merchandise, and paid the Big Bad Cretins an annual fee for the 'privilege' of keeping alive this dead concept. Now it came to pass that the Boringly Bland Cripples at Broadcasting house, suddenly, and a year or two before they announced the 're-birth' of their dead-baby, ended all licenses with Dapol and yeay, verily, did they give no good reason. Then, Supprrrise! Supprrrise! chooks! a couple of years later...they're issuing all sorts of licenses left, right and centre to global corporate toy giants and faceless marketing concerns, with 99% of all production in China to meet the demand for the bright, new, "worlds ready for the return, can't think why we ever ended it" Doctor. Now...Dapol operate in one of this Unions unemployment black-spots...what the BBC did was against everything it was set-up to represent, everything it should aspire to be and everything that is morally or ethically decent about and within a civilised society, and for that alone they should have lost the License Fee. So that's my Daleks but there are dozens of others, in the larger sizes for instance Marx alone made several in tin-plate and plastic, Poplar (was it?) did a 12-inch blow-moulded one, Cherilea did a bigger one, various plastic money-box Daleks have been produced with or without a license, and talking of no license, Hong Kong and Japan were the source for lots of battery-operated machines. Even now there's a board game with a bunch of small scale gold Daleks I keep seeing but never quite bring myself to pay for!

Such are the mysteries of synergy, that while I was preparing this article the other day I had no idea there was an upcoming issue of compatible figures! Therefore 'Bod' Paul's comments were a bit of a mystery, and I sort of thought "Ah, she (his sister) must have gone to one of those excellent comic markets (like the one I once got the 1st and 2nd issues of Heavy Metal from under Hanover station) and bought a couple of copies of one of the back issues mentioned in this article"!...

...however, I then popped over to Moonbase before my aloted time was up here at the Library, and found a whole bunch of Daleks in new colours and found WOTAN talking about a Dalek 'Army', so over to the newsagents in the main square, where I managed to get the last one! The 'last one' being a pattern that has followed my attempts to obtain these issues from the start! Not only did I now have a Dalek Army of my own, but the 'next issue' feature told me I'd be able to get Cyberman and Sontarian units as well (pencil toppers this week!), so was busy this weekend tracking down two of them.

My Sontarians have been taken out of the mould early and two of them are going to sleep, hot water should provide a cure, while a couple of the Cybermen seem a bit shaky...probably the weight of their body-armour or all those pies?

More updates below - in her own words - courtesy of Philotoadia meandering over from the Moonbase... The badly painted ones are 6 mm metal "Attack Robots" (NOT Daleks, in a bid to avoid paying a licence I am guessing). These are from Irregular Miniatures, and I think there might be rules for playing games with them in the later "Tusk" rule books.

The black Dalek is the one which came from an Advent calendar some years ago. Cannot recall the exact year, but definitely during David Tennant's time. [Well jellous of the last one!]

Absolutely the last update...for now! This was last week's effort, 2D pencil-topping Fat'leks, I love that title Toad...we should go on to Dr. Who forums commando-stylie and use it until they can't help but use it too!

These are currently to be found in Sainsbury's and Toy'R'Us among others, the trick with them if you are a Dalek Fan is; (whispers...) Squeeze the bag, the Daleks are obvious!