D is for Discovering Shire Albums in the Shire Library

Continuing with the meander through my collecting library, both for the general interest and/or hell of it, and as an illustrated bibliography which may or may not be of interest to readers, new or loyal, as to suggesting titles they might want to track down.

 

Shire Publications began with UK-specific travel and local geographic guides, known as the Discovering series, which I don't think ever got a full numbering system, even as they expanded into wider hobby interests, beginning with cultural/rural/folk stuff. That led to the larger format Shire Albums, which were renamed Shire Library when Osprey bought the intellectual property a couple of decades ago, now Osprey itself has been bought by Bloomsbury, and the future is unknown. Shire Albums were numbered more formally, and there are a couple of useful lists of early volumes, here;

Discovering series -  https://www.publishinghistory.com/discovering-series-shire.html 

Shire Albums -  https://www.publishinghistory.com/shire-albums.html

The main storage collection, as it stood about five years ago, these are the smaller Discovering series, with a few similarly formatted softback/pamphlet type publications. I don't know the full argot or jargon of book sizes, and as anyone who has a library will know, they creep in either height or depth by increments of millimetres, with hardbacks complicating things by having internal pages smaller than the dimensions of the whole 'box'. But both formats from Shire Publications were 'standard' sizes used by many other publishers/printers.

 

Here we see a MAP (Model [and] Allied Publications) guide to early plastic kits, which I mentioned while looking at the Burns guides in previous posts on the far right, and on the left a Hamlyn 'All Colour' guide to war-gaming on the left.

 

The Discovering's cover war-gaming and modelling, uniforms and militaria, artillery, horse-drawn transport and horse furniture, and while they are all small, are still very useful for research, especially when you are looking for something specific, or on the tip of an increasingly forgetful tongue (old age bites!), each is like a better illustrated Wikipedia page, you only need to reach for, no Googling lots of useless crap!

 

The larger format Shire Albums include an early tome by James Opie, and are in an even commoner format (A5), so we see an Argus Publishing plans book, and several self-published efforts, including the late John Clarke's diorama's, Britains [horse-]racing colours, and both the Spot On guide and overview of a private collection of cartoon die-casts are self-published, I think.

 

The Airfix history was one of the last new titles added to the Shire stable, numbered at 598, while the W&H list should be with the catalogues, where I have several more, it was a yearly thing for some years, I believe.

 

Added the next day - I thought there were a bunch missing! The core of the toy-related volumes are in the larger format Shire Album size, and here's their shot! 

 

Cropped out of a larger image we'll see in a future post, I grabbed this in the last few years, firstly because 'once you're collecting these things . . . ', and secondly I thought it might help ID some farm/Santon type stuff, and lastly, there is a bit of a costume sub-library in any case!

 

These were all issued as 'free gifts' in Military Modelling magazine, and used to be stapled into the centre-fold, but (with the exception of the one on top, which was a different size for some reason), they were all A5.

 

Private publications, there is very little in these which is still relevant or useful now, but they remain in the library, as all books should, in part as part of the history of the library, and against the concept of 'you never know'; always worth a flick if you're looking for something specific, like a code-number. I have no idea how many titles were issued in this private, or club (?) series?

 

Covers are different, contents are the same, -Album versus -Library.

 

Another MAP, they tended to be compendiums of material previously published in their stable of hobby magazines, and interesting to see an early publication from Pat Hammond, who would go on to become better known for his work on Hornby, Tri-Ang and Binns Road.

 

The MAP is an ex-library copy, both a useful source of old titles, and a guarantee of cheap-price, as true 'collectors' (Bibliophiles) don't rate them, so neither do the second-hand book trade!

 

 Four more minor publisher/self-published types, including more trams (all useful for manufacturers data), and three peripheral tomes, but it all builds the whole, and appendices often have useful stuff in them, lists of manufactures, or after-market (now 'garage') producers.

 

 More of the same.

 

One of the first of the new Library titles, and a useful little overview. Really belongs with the Atlantic Wall/Channel Island subsection of the military library, but should be with its brother volumes, a perennial problem when a figure or book sits firmly in two camps. Does it belong in Cake Decorations, or Ceremonials? Is it Fantasy or Medieval? Bought new, a few years ago, from Waterstones in Basingrad.

 

A visit to the secondhand bookshop in Alton, 2021.

 

Three titles I inherited, as I was sorting my late Mother's estate out, over the last few years, I have a subsection, or subsections on tiles and mosaic, so a useful work, while Shire Archaeology is a third series, running - to date - to 91 titles, listed here;

 

Shire Archaeology - https://www.librarything.com/nseries/15546/Shire-Archaeology

 

Three more interesting tomes, particularly the schools one, not something I have much on, in the library as a whole, an old ex-Public Library book on school architecture in the arts section, maybe? But an interesting read.

 

I don't know if anyone caught the history of Boarding Schools by Nicky Campbell, the Radio1 DJ, on Radio4 recently, but as someone shoved through that flawed and damaging system, I found it both poignant and nostalgic in equal measure.

 

Also inherited, these share one code in the partial numbering of Discovering's

Mum's own fields included furniture, silverware, and latterly oriental art and ceramics.

 

 Another visit to Alton!

 

The most recent but one visit, and seen before, we've also seen Horse Drawn Commercial Vehicles and a second edition of Antique Maps, from a visit this year. While 487, Garden Gnomes, has so far escaped me, but it's only a matter of time! Discovering Book Collecting is a good full stop to this post!

L is for Last One For Now!

 I know it's not everyone's cup-of-tea, but I find this stuff fascinating, and there's plenty still in the queue, both from Alderney and closer to home, but this is the final part of the recent visit to Hazeley Heath and the cable-testing station of the Royal Engineers and their antecedents.

This is the building or structure the winding mechanism/s was/were housed in, it was far more substantial, but all the reclaimable steel and reusable elements are long-gone now, leaving the two outer walls, some floor mounting stuff and a protective plate.

 

There's enough roadway in front of the structure for flat-towing tests, as well as the extreme tests allowed for by dragging things up the ramp we looked at last time! The top of the ramp is in the far distance in both shots, in-line with the structure and roadway.

 

This was apparently the mounting for the main winch/winding engine, presumably bolted to the two rails with a drip-tray between them to collect all the gunk which tends to find its way out of such machinery!

 

Beyond it is what looks like an inspection-pit, all filled in, but the blurb suggests another machine mounting, so I assume someone has dug it and found it to be not deep-enough for inspecting things?

In front of them is this, which probably mounted a pulley to carry the cable a bit higher over to the ramp, where a similar pulley, and its mounting have long-since been removed.  Also, there may be a secondary function of preventing whip-lashing broken-cables from damaging the machinery?

 

Heavy steel RSJ remnants hint at a heavy-duty, or over-engineered roof/shelter, designed again, or primarily, to protect the machinery and operators/observers from snapping cables, rather than enemy action, having been probably build long before the Second World War?

 

I gave them a quick tug, and they are set-fast in the landscape, whether they are old telephone cables or the old three-phase power-supply . . . Your guess is as good as mine!

 

I either read somewhere, or heard as hearsay from some MOD-procurement chaps or BAE Systems bod's, that how it works with these things, is that you decide you want a 50-ton main battle tank, for instance, you give the job to Vickers Engineering, and if you’re happy with the prototypes, order, say 250, with ten driver-training versions, plus a number of recovery variants . . . and cables (etcetera!).

Those cables then get rated at 55-tons, by the Royal Armoured Corps, who will have to use them, the MOD-wallah's up in Whitehall, agree to 55, and add another 5-ton rating to be safe, that gets sent to Vickers, who tender-out the contract, because they've now got 260 tanks to build and some recovery vehicles to design, and can't be arsed to start twisting wire hawsers! They add 5-tons capacity to the contract!

GKN take the wire twisting gig, and add an extra 5-tons 'just to be safe', before their hawser and cable division plait another few tones of capability into the finished cables! You end up with a steel-rope, which is specifically designed to be carried by 50-ton vehicles, but which can recover 70-ton vehicles from sticky mud! All that early work seems to have been done behind a little village in rural Hampshire, in the 1930's and 1940's!

B is for Brain Fog

As I said the other day, we used to play out on the heath, all day! Mum would fill our water-bottles with orange squash, I had Dad's old Palestine one, with the tan, strappy-cage holder, and my brother had the green US Vietnam one with the two poppers at the neck (the SAS used them in the jungle), and a couple of cold sausage sandwiches, and we'd go off and play 'Army men' all day, ranging for miles and sometimes meeting other kids, sometimes having a 1000-acres to ourselves, if we avoided the Gypsy camps!

One of my childhood memories was finding a tank-testing inclined ramp, in fact, I remember two, side by side, about 30º and 40º each, but what has now been opened-up and left on display, is A) nothing like my memory, and B) somewhere else!

And while it may be that the others are somewhere else, on the more private land a few-hundred yards to the east, hidden in the undergrowth, I suspect that my memory of this (below) has become conflated with various pictures of similar ramps in tank or AFV books?

What is there now is more of an architectural channel, with various features and a steepness of around 45º, rather than the two flat roadways I remember? It could be slightly shallower, but as we'll see in a second, I don't think so, if it is, it's no less than 40º.

 

There is a bog at the bottom, now, it's ironic, but you wouldn't build a military testing facility in a bog, near a bog, if you are testing towing (as they were, according to the historians who've done the blurb on the info-sign), maybe, but not 'in' a bog, so the fact that there is a bog there now, or that a nearby bog has extended back to the ramp, is almost certainly an unforeseen consequence of building a ramp there in the first place, and channelling a lot of water straight down the hill!

 

There are signs of a metal slider type thing running along the tops of the two raised 'rails', obviously someone back in the 1950/60's removed the bulk of the metalwork for scrap (probably the Gypseys?), but they cut either side of the sections anchored into the concrete. And you can see, if I'm standing vaguely level, and holding the camera naturally, it's about 45º

Here's one that has been pulled out, or weathered-out at some point, so you can get some idea of how deep the anchors went, it's filled with dirt now, mostly sandy, so weathered concreate running down the slope and filling any holes it finds!

This was lying in the channel where some kids probably pulled it out of the bog, or found it in the undergrowth, it's a solid chink of steel with a blunt-point at one end and might be another kind of anchor, for either the hawsers under test, or the test weights/vehicles?

Life will find a way, and eventually even the pyramids will be no more.

In the central grove are these equidistant holes, which I suspect formed a ladder of scaffold-sized bars, which might have made climbing up or down the ramp more easy, or may have been for fixing anchors or stops to prevent the test-item running back down the ramp uncontrollably if/when the hawser failed?

D is for Defence Works & Dragons Teeth!

I shot these the other evening in Guildford. When I was going to collage there in the 1980's they were hidden in the undergrowth either side of the old sort-cut path, but, in the 1980's the population of the UK was half what it is now, and the necessary development which has filled the years between has lead to them being revealed, as more formal paths were arranged through them, and in 1998 they are formally recognised with a plaque (bolted to one of them) and are watched-over of not actually looked after! They are yards from the London Road railway station in the centre of town.

One or two are still overgrown in the background, and a better-surviving example was seen here on Small Scale World, many years ago, about a mile to the south, which would all have been part of the same defence plan - to prevent German invasion forces coming up from the South East corner of Britain, getting though the Downs at the  'Golden Ford' and having a clear-run across Surrey Heath toward London.

 

When you realise how many gargantuan flack-towers (Flaktürme) are still blotting the landscape around Germany and Austria, a few Dragoons teeth look quite innocuous! These, unlike the ones down by the river, don't seem to have any pattern to them and may have been individually cast on a Monday morning, or Friday night?!! Built by 578 Army Field Company of the Royal Engineers in February 1942 . . . a bit late really!

OB (?) is for Toy Leader, Pioneer, Woolbro and probably Zita et al?

Those loyal readers who have followed the Blog for some time will know there's usually one or two posts in RTM which get bogged-down in the minutia of branding, phantom-brands and brand-marks without proving much beyond the fact the Chinese/Hong Kong/Jobber branding can be a nightmare!

This is sort of one of those, but it also adds a bit to the Pioneer story (mostly uncovered here) and gives us a couple of what I suspect are quite late (i.e. quite recent) Woolbro items.

A couple of different sets, credited to a Toy Leader and imported into the UK by Woolbro, we'll do the brand stuff at the end. Contents are similar to the Realtoy military sets, or the Peace Enforce set we saw last year? If you then click 'older post' you'll get the contemporaneous Woolbro set we also saw then.

One in temperate combat scheme, the other desert, are they post '90/91 Gulf War, or earlier, there's no clue on the packaging? The contents however are really quite interesting, with references to various other Asian toy-lines/Marques.

The figures, are they the same ones Stonegalleon carry, softer versions from the Realtoy tool, or straight Pioneer production . . . well, they are the larger size, so it would seem they are from the tooling used for the Realtoy (and other) sets, and it may be that the sharper, squarer based figures (last year's and the Zita set) are from the same tooling, but weren't commissioned by Realtoy (or whoever was behind Realtoy - Dacron, Smart, Supreme?), so don't turn-up in the harder vinyl with consecutive numbering.

The trolley I have loose in my collection, it's a darker green, and better engineered (I think, I'll have to compare them when all this shite is properly sorted) and I assumed it was someone like either Corgi (all those 1:48th 'planes in recent years) or New Ray, and the recoilless-rifle here looks ex-New Ray too, so it would seem we have a pattern emerging?

I think the trolley is some kind of air-force ground-equipment, a charger, tester, starter or something, while the AT weapon is looking a bit TOW-like so second-generation ATGM? I would add that the stadium/marshalling-yard lamp-stands were seen in that other 'group' of sets branded Supreme/Ackerman/Titan etc?

Neither picture is perfect I'm afraid, but two new poses (in these softer ranges), both known from the harder Realtoy sets; kneeling pointing in jungle-hat (boonie-hat)a nd the prone gunner.

Again, I think some of these have been seen in New Ray's superior (for rack toys) 54mm sets of ten-or-more years ago, namely; a four-crate, WWII German werfer of nebels and a US/NATO M252 Mortar, while the sandbag emplacement looks prety-much the same as the Realtoy ones.

The temperate set has a GS-bodied truck, while the dessert set has a lookie-MLRS-likey rocket launcher get up, which seems to fire the same 150mm Werfgranate as the crated infantry-support Nebelwerfer, from two side mounts with hinged covers.

The slogans on the trucks is interesting, they both have Aoutca Dnphentkul written on the cab-doors, which Google-translate identified as Hmong, an ethnicity from Laos, Vietnam and South Western China, allied to the US in the second Indochinese war, many now live in Thailand or the USA. There is no direct translation.

While the Myo Niutop Buti on the rear of the rocket launcher was tentatively ID'd as Pilipino, with a translation of something-something-'good'? Both also have a hawk or falcon with the English message 'Fighting Action'! The two odd messages point to a Hmong-staffed factory in the Southern Chinese Yunnan province, making stuff-up 'on the hoof'?

But the Vcuneld on the back of the GS truck gets no suggested language, so it could just be a random-word generation robot/algorithm, but these are probably 1990's and such things weren't common back then, especially in an Asian toy factory!

So, to my thoughts on the branding . . . obviously imported by Woolbro, and marked-up to 'Toy Leader' the logo can't possibly be made to represent TL, looking distinctly like an OB? It's how they roll out there, and why Lik Be are LB, not LP or IDL!

And on the other card, the logo has been covered (before the blister was applied) with what looks like part of an Easter-egg artwork (or something equally bright and cartoony?) sticker, suggesting even they (the factory or shipper/jobber in the Far East) realised the logo-type was daft!

There is a prominent consumer message in Greek on the back of the cards (along with various other nationalities) so, given previous posts here at Small Scale World, it may be that these could be found in Greece with Zita stickers, and I'll add them to the tags for completion, even if they weren't, the connections are all there!

I suspect this is Pioneer production, a generic, given a phantom-brand wash which hasn't helped, copying from New Ray's more original stuff, and rehashing some of the stuff they supplied to Realtoy, but in new colours and with the softer rubber-figures?

B is for Bobbly Bunker!

I drove past this the other day, at Edenbrook, near Dogmersfield, and noticed it had an interesting roof, so stopped and took a few pictures, now there's a car park - it has been a field most of my life - and despite being still quite away outside town, is being turned into an 'end destination leisure facility' for the denizens of the new developments which are turning Fleet from a small Victorian dormitory into a larger town lacking facilities of most kinds!

Facing Northward, it seems to be a pretty standard Type 22, but they are hexagonal, while this in an octagon; more commonly associated with the much larger Type 27, even to the added entrance block off one wall, but the variation between bunkers - of any type - was vast and the common instruction from the ministries was "do what you can with rationed materials, local supply/construction problems, manpower availability and the lie of the land."

Looking Southeast, this would have been part of the GHQ-A Line, one of several lines of defence against invasion from the Germans, and I shot another a couple of miles away ages ago which I'll try to get up here shortly. The door is obviously a modern one, and I suspect the town council is using it to store tools or community activity stuff for the bike track and allotments being constructed in the field.

Due West, this could be modeled from the unit embedded in the old Airfix play set Gun Emplacement although that plastic one doesn't have walls of the same length, but it would look OK! In fact you could remove the ventilation shafts and door over-hangs of both bunkers in that set and glue them together to get the basic for this one!

Heavy-wire/reinforcing bar has been set into the cement/mortar courses to attach camouflage netting or foliage too and you can see that with a lot of these bunkers, the corners were left unfinished to save time - in peacetime a join like that would be pared-back flush with each face.

Dead South, and you can see a heavy concrete roof has been added and given a look I haven't seen on others round here, perhaps at the whim of the builder, in his own time at the end of the day, perhaps for a specific reason, like breaking up its outline in a bare-arsed field - the trees may not have been there then, just a low/trimmed hedge?

The light was muted and with uniform weathering it was not the best conditions for photography, but you can see the bobbled effect of 20 or so pimples rising out of the body of the concrete.

The positioning of the bunker - which would have had a section of ten men when fully manned with a couple of LMG's and maybe some anti-tank capability, Boyes .55" A/T rifle or one of the Home Guard 'contraptions' (The Northover Projector) - is ideal for covering the tunnel under the main-line to Basingstoke to the West (upper image) and the bend in the road coming up from the South (lower image).

Although the positioning of the door without an additional protective blast-wall suggests that the main expected role was to cover/counter enemy advance up the road from the south - the Odiham area. Once the Odiham/Alton area was in their hands, they would have several air bases to bring in troops, and would be heading to Farnborough and Blackbush, to take/neutralise the air bases there?

And/or indeed - to neutralise the vast garrison/training area of Aldershot-Farnborough-North Camp, Arborfield, Camberley-Frimley, Chobham, Crookham, Deepcut, Pirbright/Bisley and Southwood-Minley (hell - it was all military round here!), before turning-right for London!

By some chance twist of irony, there are at the same place, three modern, civilian, triple-spike 'containment' barriers, aping the old dragons-teeth, but probably presenting little challenge to a Challenger II! They join-together like jig-saw puzzle pieces!