F is for Follow-up - John Piper Railway Figures

Well, thanks to Jon Attwood we have more on John Piper, both clues as to who/what and more figures to look at! Jon sensibly turned to Garratt's encyclopedia, which I hadn't even considered, and we get, under M.A. Model Accessories, the following;

 

"M.A. Model Accessories (John Piper), Kingston-upon-Thames (1977-80). Metal AFV's and diorama accessories. Taken over in 1980 by Miltra."

Which, given Miltra left a similar history, is not much of a help, but it does suggest that all those glossy Ad's didn't prevent a rapid decline, and explains the paucity of stuff, however, it was out there once and Jon has managed to track-down three sets which he was offering to open for us, but I've as good as begged him not too, they are more valuable fiscally, to him, AND historically, to the hobby, if left whole!

I have enhanced these shots in Picasa, the cards may be a tad more fawn or beige ('manilla') than they appear here, I brightened and whitened them a bit!

Now, I do recognise the spikes, or rods, under the figures which means I have got some - probably - loose ones somewhere, so we will return to them again, someday, for sure!

The spikes are for locating the figures in your diorama, by drilling into your plastic platform or porch, wooden baseboard or chicken wire & papier-mâché, or foam/foam-board/soft-board scenery, so you can glue the figure exactly where you want it, and slight dinks while operating the system won't knock them over. You wonder why more model-railway accessories don't come like that! Many thanks to Jon for all this.

Tim Gow obtained one of the Miltra  for MOD sets a few years ago (a few? Nine! Nine years ago, where the hell did that all go?), and these may therefore be the John Piper sculpts;

http://megablitzandmore.blogspot.com/2015/06/great-crate.html

 

Sadly, there were no figures in the set, so my own question mark (in the archives) over whether the figures were resin (reported in Military Modelling I think) or 'plastic' as Garratt reports, still awaits a definite answer! Can you help us with more on either John Piper/MA Model Accessories or Miltra?

J is for John Piper

A strange one this, for a short while in the late 1970's and early 1980's, this firm - John Piper - seemed to flourish, with smart, well illustrated adverts across the modelling press, railway, naval and military, I don't know if the aircraft modellers were similarly enticed?

Yet, the paucity of stuff they seem to have actually left behind, the lack of familiarity people have with their products compared with, say, Scale Link or [Françoise] Verlinden, suggests they didn't actually ship much product for the cost of all that glossy advertising?

And one has to assume there was a major investment by someone, a backer or the eponymous Mr. Piper himself? The trouble is, even the model railroad hobby, much bigger than vintage toy soldier collecting, can only support so many small, 'garage' businesses, with those that start to struggle in the regular downturns, selling to one of the slightly bigger concerns, so that they might ride-it-out with an increased inventory, while the small guy escapes, hopefully with a small profit, or breaking-even, or at least still with his shirt?

Courtesy of Jon Attwood

(I love the Lettraset font!)

I may have a few of the figures in the unsorted/unknown section of the whitemetal tub in storage, but don't recognise any of the above, off-hand, while I lusted after the AFV's, as they would have gone with the Roco and Roscopf stuff, Dad's instructors had given me in Neuhausen! The 'Grey Goose' apparently turns-up occasionally, usually for a lot of money! The choices of odd scales can't have helped with the military sales?

 

I have a feeling John Piper over-extended with the launch and marketing, found the markets weren't that big and folded with the sort of debts that require the assets being weighed-in for scrap? Does anybody have any solid info' on what happened to them, or their tools, how much business they did, or what their history was? Is there anything in G2 or On Parade in the back-catalogue of Military Modelling? For now at least, box ticked.