R is for Railway Station, Passengers & Servicemen

But not those servicemen! Here's a coincidence, Jon Attwood sent this in his last lot of images, so it might have been later in the queue, but then John Rafferty (who I know dips into the blog now and again) happened, the other day, to mention 'Toy Shop', by Peter Blake, the well-known artist, famous for all sorts of things, but especially, among the younger of us, for his Beatles' album cover 'St Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, which happened to have the same set!

We saw my card a while ago, when it finally surfaced from storage, before retuning thence, and I thought it might be missing a bit, well, it was missing the title 'bar' for some odd reason? In fact, it had had most of the picture cut off! So here it is in it's entirety, thanks Jon!

 

While the same set has been on display at the Tate, on and off since 1970! Left-of-centre in the upper-middle pane, with the Hong Kong knock-off cereal-premium racing cars below it! John had actually spotted the ABC copies of Britains Swoppet knights in the pane below, while an odd Marx Disney set is to be seen top right,  with three ducks (Donald, Daisy and one of the cousins?), the Red Queen and Captain Hook on the far right? Cheers to John!

M is for Minor 'Euro-Makes'!

Actually I'm going to tack a major on at the end, whom we've already revisited once in this occasional series, entering it's third month with at least 12 posts still to come, plus a combined comparison/round-up post at the end. And today, some of the European makers we haven't yet looked at.

From a 1970's Vollmer catalogue, are these wagons, which I think missed the wagon posts a few years ago, they look to be Preiser, but the horses are the smoother, simpler ones more commonly associated with the Roscopf wagons or some Hong Kong copies. Indeed, I think I've mentioned before, that I'm not sure what the relationship is between the three or four (Noch seem to have carried other people's product before they embarked on their own, now Preiser-equalling, range), so I can't add much beyond that the similarities are obvious?

 

While this is the 2000 Walther's (Terminal Hobby Shop) catalogue, and we see what are clearly Preiser, in a 'simple paint', we actually saw this earlier in the post series, but I scanned it again!

 

Not sure if these are from Merten or Preiser, (they have the arm'y/leg'y look of Merten?) but again a rolling-stock and trackway manufacturer, getting 'simple-paint' samples from another maker, to enhance their catalogue with a basic set, it's all part of the 'brand-loyalty' work, isn't it? Add a couple of Pola buildings, a level-crossing, some track plans, Heki trees . . . and 'Fleischmann' people!

 

This - the Jouef figures - is a personal embarrassment, as I think it's their third mention on the Blog, over the sixteen years, with the Mettoy Playcraft scans appearing at one point, and yet, despite seeing them go to storage, I still haven't photographed them, but they did appear in One Inch Warrior magazine, I think, in black & white, which doesn't do justice to the loud and leery paint job, of the Playcraft - ironically a Tri-Ang rival from the same Line's empire!

 

I have since found slightly better painted ones (in shade, not the two-colour stab-and-hope scheme), which may be Jouef origianls, from whose catalogue these scans are added to the previous shots! And playcraft sold them from the Jouef bags, so they were only ever nominally Playcraft! Also, didn't Hornby experiment with passengers pre-glued to platform sections at one point? Instant Stations!

From the same Walther's catalogue, this was, I think, the beginning of what has in recent years become a line to rival Preiser, and we have seen one or two here, a Bierfest stand springs to mind, and I will one day do the rude sets, of which I have several and they should have been in the 'Adult' naughty-post before Christmas, but they are in storage.

 

Noch were originally another prefabricated building/scenic's firm, like Pola, Vollmer or Wiad, and like them had a couple of simple figures kicking around the pages of their catalogues, in boats or something, from time to time, but in the last quarter-century have developed a range to rival Preiser, even as Priser swallowed-up Elastolin and Merten to stay ahead!

I don't know much about these, except that they are probably lead or whitemetal, possibly composition, and as listed in this old catalogue? Klinebahn (literally 'small way'), and in sets of six matching the lead of early Märklin, or the sets of Preiser, Merten and those above.

 

And, having just mentioned them, our third visit to Märklin in this railway-figure 'season', and no, we are not going to start investigating O, G, S, 1, BIG or any other gauge, that can be for another day, or for the A-Z pages! But I wanted to post this set of composition figures and - specifically - the interactive or 'working' guard, as it's just so cool! All in O-gauge.

 

The catalogue mentions the 1937 Grand Prix of Paris, on the cover, but seems to be actually the 1949 issue, as they started to recover from the national madness of national socialism.

F is for Follow-up - Märklin

Using only the sheer power of the Overnight-Interwebby-Thing, Jon Attwood has sent the Märklin 0203 set, and in the course of sorting it through the pending railway posts, I found another image he sent for the original post, and because there's lots more to come from other railway brands, I thought "Best get this up here now!"

First his loose figures; better paint than mine (one of mine, you may have noticed, is repainted), but several of his are suffering from what looks like zinc pest (zinc-rot or zamak/mazac-rot), so they may well be die-cast after all, see my note on the previous post - click the Märklin Tag to get them all up.

And 0203, with the correct label, I'll make a mental note to do a comparison shot with the Hong Kong ones arranged the same one way, one day, but for now, thank you, Jon (he's sent lots of stuff!), and another box ticked!

M is for More on Märklin

We have looked at the larger Hong Kong copies, and mentioned the smaller ones in passing once or twice, but we've never looked at the originals, nor properly compared them all, so this is really the first proper overview of Märklin's OO/HO figure sets.

The original manuscript-notes from my old book-project, it's not been updated since . . . ooh, before 2005 at least, some of the entries are now '2nd format, second draft' with older ones being fourth draft, 1st format, so it's a while since I last edited it, and it may date from the early formation of the manuscript in 1994-7?

 

However, it stands up well, I suspect that item '6' (figure type) is incorrect, they will be centrifugal-moulded, poured-lead, rather than what we think of nowadays as 'die-cast', and obviously '11' (format/packaging) is wrong, they came in little boxes of ten items each, as we are about to see!

 

I have five! Three from 0201 (top left), and two from 0203 (top right) compared with the little piracies which turn-up from time to time. They were pirated twice, the small ones are unpainted, reduced-size polyethylene, and may date from the late 1960's-early 1970's, there were a few in my biscuit-tin, back in the day.

 

And, almost certainly earlier, they were 'used' as a basis for caricature, cartoonish copies (of 0201 only), in a larger size, coming out of Hong Kong in a hard polystyrene - lower right, in the 1950's, we looked at them here . . .

 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2018/11/c-is-for-carded-cartoon-characters-for.html

 

. . . and I needed the lady in green to complete my loose sample!

From the 1959 catalogue we have the full contents of 0201 and 0203 (sans the guy leaning on his shovel who is hidden under the overlapping corner of 0201!), with 0201 blown-up and compared with some recent newcomers, sadly, three damaged including the guy in green who was (is) the last one I need whole, for a complete loose sample, but, good things come to those who wait!

 

The full contents of 0202, with an 0201 lid, courtesy of Jon Attwood, I saw a few of these in the listing room at the old A4 Bath Road site of SAS Auctions many years ago, and a few weeks later they didn't go cheap, hence why I only have the five loose ones! Having been copied in neither of the pirated sets, these are the rarer 'sculpts'.

 

From Schiffmann's Band 12 collectors catalogue (pp.147) I can further tell you 0203 also had a seperate label on the box, which showed the track-gang ('maintenance of way') in action, 0202 shared the label of 0201 despite not being illustrated on it.

 

I almost prefer these, they take rough handling and are very colourful, although we had the better stuff from Hornby-Tri Ang, and later Wrenn, Graham Farish et al, when we were kids, they were added later, to our first carpet-railways, which were the grey, plastic-tracked, clockwork trains from Tri-Ang (and Playcraft?) with primary-coloured wagons, and these guys are just made to go with them!

So far, the silver is proving the hard-to find colour, and pose-wise, now I've found two more carrying shovels, the site-Forman/surveyor, with his map, is the 'rare' pose! There is a clear HONG KONG mark along the beam of the sleeper (tie) being carried by the duo, and all the above are to a lesser or greater extent flats or semi-flats (demi-ronde).

Right, many thanks to Jon for the boxed set's images, and I think that's done them all justice! Boxes ticked!

 

But we still have this similar 'mystery' set . . . 

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2014/10/u-is-for-unknown-ho-railway-flats.html

B is for Best Toy Ever? Working Machinegun

It's time for another Best Toy Ever post, and like the last one, thanks are due to Adrian Little (Mercator Trading) who took this along to a show where I was able to get a few shots off. Not 100% sure to the maker, but some of the ammunition resupplies are marked Märklin which is probably a good clue to the original maker too.

The contents were less than pristine having obviously been played with, well; you'd want to play with a best toy ever wouldn't you! Basically, it's a firing machine-gun, and I don't mean it makes a noise like a machinegun, I mean you feed it a belt of pre-loaded ammunition and it bangs . . .  as it fires rubber-bullets; it's too damn cool for the SF-Cadre!

A scaled-down feed mechanism and cap-firing hammer are operated by the turning of the handle, which is not far removed from the handle found on a Gatling Gun. Painting is similar to pre- or inter-war toys, but the two instruction sheets are cruder than you might expect from a 1930's toy, also at least one (the pink sheet above) seems to be that purpleish thing which I think we used to call  a 'roneo' (spell?) copy.

So I suspect it is just post-war? But using a pre-war tool, and painting style, just to get a product up and running in a blasted economy, and apart for the unconvincing clues to a post war sale, there's nothing in it.

This was the best bit! An exquisite chain of small brass turnings each of which can take a cap-gun charge at one end (top), and a rubber bullet at the other end (bottom), all tied together in a series of sort-of Morbius-loops or - more accurately - figure-of-eights, which allow for flexibility and a 'belt' feel, but which arrangement keeps the strings tight to the 'rounds' so they don't foul the mechanism, it's very clever!

The original bullets were small vulcanised rubber (tyre rubber) shells, but seem to have been replaced - due to loss - with small wooden splints which could be jammed in the blast hole between the cap-charge and the barrel, which must have worked because there were enough for the whole belt (with signs of jamming-in) which you wouldn't bother with if it all didn't work.

I couldn't try it as we had no caps on site, and you wouldn't want to break something like this if you hadn't paid for it, not to mention the cotton 'belt' arrangement looked like it might need replacing with some newer threads! But I can imagine what it must have been like spurting rubber death at ranks of composition or hollow-cast toy soldiers - best toy ever . . .

. . . 'till next time!

B is for Best Toy Ever . . . Again!

Some best-toys win on features or playability (the Tri-Ang Battle Game), others win on sheer quality (The Britains Land Rover), but when I awarded the Britains Land Rover BTE status, I hadn't seen today's entrant, which trumps the Land Rover by a country-mile, making it look all a bit cheap and placky!

It's the gonad-challenged leader of the 4,000-odd-day Reich; Herr Adolf Hitler, in his Mercedes tourer, with straight-backed driver at the controls. Shot two years ago at the then September Sandown Park show, this has been sat in Picasa ever since, but two years is about par for the stuff in the queue! Adrian Little of Mercator (link) is to thank for allowing me to photograph it.

I can't remember if Adrian said if it was Elastolin or Lineol, but it has a porcelain-head Hitler so it could be Elastolin, although other people bought-in the figures for their vehicles; Arnold, Bing and Karl Bub, for instance, so I stand to be corrected.

The detail of the model is on a par with modern, similarly scaled (and unnecessarily expensive) 'executive desk toy' type limited edition things, and compared with my Land Rover, is in a different league.

The main construction is tin-plate, but much use is made of die-cast and white-metal parts, down to the little door-handles! The wheels are almost scale replicas with rubber tyres, steel rims and cast hubs on rod-axles.

If one thing lets it down it's the steering-wheel which is a simple tin-stamping which doesn't look right next to all the other, finer detailing? The Fuhrer also has a moveable arm so he can do his flicky-little Nazi salute, or madly wave at his granny!

I can't remember where this came from; it's cropped out of a larger (but un-watermarked) image, from somewhere - auction catalogue on feeBay? Anyway, you can see the cheaper, rival Märklin model has all-tin wheels/tyres and simpler figures, albeit three of them, probably small O-Gauge/40mm to boot? Whether the main-subject above is also a 1936 model Mercedes or not I don't know, there are differences between the mud-guards of the two vehicles?

A worthy - if temporary - winner of 'Best Toy Ever' I hope you'll agree; despite it's background politics, it's a beautiful thing and many thanks to Adrian for the chance to photograph it.

C is for Carded Cartoon Characters for Concourse and Carriage!

I can't remember if we looked at these properly or in passing as part of a show report, but I know Peter Evans gave me some at PW's show earlier this year, while I added a few I had here, I've now added the card from storage, but was sure I had some lose figures in storage too, and I haven't found them yet, so there may be another few somewhere, however - the card is the important bit . . .

. . . as it adds two poses to whatever we looked at whenever we did/didn't last look at them!

So; the full breakdown is five staff members, and five passengers, semi-flat, Hong Kong and around 25mm. I think I have a spare of the green chap elsewhere as well, due to his looking like a meant-to-be fully-round figure, if/when found on his own!

Based on/scaled-up from the old lead HO figures from Märklin (via Hans Wettig?), specifically set 0201 and limited to the ten poses from that set - There were two other sets in the Märklin catalogue, a forth in Schiffmann 12 (under Wettig) and the unknown set we looked at here, none of which have turned-up, scaled-up in hard Hong Kong polymer, although the rail-maintenance set (0203) were pirated in soft polyethylene, same size.

Close-up of the fat lady (she hasn't sung so Small Scale World goes on!) and a member of the rail staff from the era when A) there were rail staff to find on the platform and B) having been found they were happy to oblige!

M is for Might be Märklin

And they might be even more 'Märklin' than these which we looked at the other day. Not least because they all came together with the metal ones.

Like the funny Welsh lady we looked at a while ago, they look to have been styled for composition, particularly the rail staff in the middle shot. There are no similar figures in composition in the Schiffmann guide, so I guess either further afield than Germany, or new sculpts in the old style, but for the new material?

18-20mm each, they are 7/10 black and pink plastic, so possibly from two batches, the black ones getting the pale flesh paint, the pink ones having the bases painted black.

I know Märklin are supposed to have produced a set of plastics, briefly, after their metal flats and I've never seen them, only an unillustrated listing in - I think - a US market MAERKLIN catalogue from the late 1960's? Does anybody recognise them?

 

Dec. 2023 - I now believe these are early Reisler, but they are not listed on the Tohan site as one of the recognised 'Sortiment's, so Lego could be in the frame, but their Police quartet (the closest Lego figures to these), were different from the four above, who are station-staff anyway?

U is for Unknown HO Railway Flats

Straight into the image I think...

...right; these are a mystery. They look at first glance to be Märklin, same size; HO, same design; flats, same slightly lozenged oblong bases, but then you notice the colours, far too bright for Märklin, so next thought is did Märklin produce a 'budget' range in simpler colour schemes? Well, there are as many colour changes on these as on Märklin originals, just a brighter - more primary - pallet, so that doesn't really wash.

OK, turn to Schiffmann's catalogue, volume 12...nothing, not under Märklin or anywhere else, what does become clear though is that these aren't Märklin poses either, similar to but not the same, to the point where you think that they are trying really hard to look like Märklin?

I'm guessing they aren't German, so early French? Jouef liked some bright decoration? Two of the poses who might be mistaken for railway staff seem to be a postman and a wagoner (wagoneer? Spellcheck's not happy), so they might be for enhancing a wooden toy village or something and nothing to do with model railways? Although the guy in blue buying a paper seems to be rail staff.

So does anybody have any idea who made these and when?

Added the next day; I'm going to suggest they are by Spielwaren [Hans] Wettig, who were apparently the supplier of the Märklin flats, and who made a set of their own 28mm flat civilians (see the above mentioned Schiffmann pp.196), and might therefore have also produced an HO range, despite the Märklin contract. The fact that some of these figures are similar to both Wettig's 28mils and the 18mm Märklin's helps?