V is for Vac-forms, Part 2 - Bellona Battlefields, Powerplay Battleground & Efka Battle-Ho-Rama

Bellona set on the left, this is one of the smaller sets from Micro Mould Plastics (Unifax group), and they have appeared in various header-cards over the years, all white, and green that I know of and were sold as Bellona, Mico Mold, and Almark, they also supplied some to Roco Minitanks. I've recently seen it said Bellona were 'Always in a dark brown colour', as will become apparent further down the post, they actually came in a wide verity of colours, from pure white and grey to dark olive covering most shades of sand and fawn on the way! I'm also pretty sure the upper cottage of the two was copied by Skytrex in 1:300 scale lead!

To the right a Battleground set, these were made in Stockport in the UK, by Power Play/Mainstream Products, but seem to have been mostly sold in the US, probably so's not to get into a major war with Bellona. Some sets are similar to Bellona, others however, are quite unique. There seem to have been at least 18 in the rage of which I now know of 13.

To the left are a couple of Battle-Ho-Rama's from Efka, which I am pretty sure is a Belgian company, Unlike Battleground, these are all straight copies on Bellona ideas, tweaked to be less than identical. On the right we see the Bellona 'Small Bridge' with the Efka copy - Campaign Bridge with 2 machine-gun posts - behind, their walls, tents and gun-positions are all equally similar, and the 'Albert Canal' base in the bigger bag is clearly aping Bellona's 'Canal Wharf' set.

Going back to the bridges, you can see two treatments, either cutting them out with the culvert filled and painting it a dark colour, which leaves a little strength in a flimsy moulding (bough-in in a mixed lot of tat), or as I began to do (20+ years ago!), base it and cut out the culvert arches ready to paint 'water', the base giving it a strength that will help it survive a hundred war-games.

Of the various vac-form companies, Bellona seem to have been the most prolific, both in number of sets (40 or more in the final list) and in production, model shops still had large quantities of these to shift in the late '90's. Top right shows a couple of roofed bunkers, quite a few of both Bellona's and Efka's pieces were of this 'constructional' type, they called for a steady hand with the knife/scissors!

Here we see more examples of mine and another's work's to strengthen/enhance them for war-gaming, A) shows the basing of the set to the left, with two different approaches to cutting it out, the other guy (far left) will get cracks forming inward from the acute angles he's cut at the back of the position, cutting straight, on the flat area of 'waste' sheet prevents that, basing gives stability. B) Filling the gaps in a tightly-trimmed piece and starting to landscape with door-mat beatings.

C) shows a plaster-cast I've taken from the shell-scrape to the right, you can make quite a few castings before the vac-form starts to suffer damage. D) Is two treatments of a shell scrape to show in the upper example; a 'usable' (by troops) 'shell-scrape', in the lower one; a mud-filled 'shell-hole'. Humm...not much difference between shell-hole and hell-hole, huh?

The wall's (top left); Showing the way I created the one in the middle, first I cut the ends off two short sections (I couldn't wait for Tangley or Concord Models to get the long lengths in!) and glued them together before highlighting the 'gaps' in the dry-stone with matt black (1), then painted the stones in one-at-a-time with different shades of grey, keeping the darker 'Atlantic Grey' as the predominant shade (2) and finally dry-brushed in pale gray before flocking the base with saw-dust 'scatter'. Twenty-plus years and I've got one length finished!! Ah...you either collect, or war-game, or model, if you try to do all three you're bound to fail at at-least two of them!

I've also shown made and unmade corner pieces, note there are at least four colours/shades of plastic here, if someone tells you otherwise, send them here!

Again Efka produced a very similar sheet (I recon - if treated the same as mine they'd be hard to tell apart), but with angled sections at about 50% and a strange corner piece that meant you couldn't produce a usable enclosure (or 'run') from even two sheets?

The Bellona tentage, I seem to have lost the pup-tents that came with this set, but they were a bit shite! I added flaps to the bell-tents (a common design dating from before the Crimean War until well after WWII, and taking in most of the main campaigns of the Colonial period and the ACW.

The other tent is a bit of a dead-loss, can't get it to look realistic enough for my taste and if I re-did it now, I'd replace my rather weird attempt at a rolled up door with something bunched in ties, from tissue-paper. Efka went with a slightly more plausible medieval looking thing, but binned the Bell-tents for two horrendous 'coconut-shies' and had a similar number of blobby Pup-tents.

V is for Vac-forms, Part 3 - Others/Unknowns

Here we have a few odds and sods; Top left is what I suspect is the insert for the box-packaging of a 1950's set of toy soldiers, or a wagon or such-like, being a sort of trench, open at both ends (07-03-2017 - it is - Cané of Italy trench, issued with 5/6 figures in a blister above it's own, on a backing card). Next to it - in black - is what I thought was an Amera moulding, being in a heavier gauge plastic than the older makes, however it's not on their website, so I guess it isn't, however it looks quite modern so someone will know, JNT? Far right is something I know I've got somewhere in the collection/archive, but just because it's supposed to be there doesn't mean I can find it! I think it's from the Esci board-game/play-sets of a few years ago but don't quote me.

Below left, could be from one of the earlier Esci Polystyrene play-set/kit compendiums of the 1970's but I favour it being a Power Play MPG 10 - Wrecked Vehicle. Easily identifiable are the broken bits of an Airfix 88mm Gun and Tractor, along with the Austin Ambulance and K6 fire-engine from the same manufacturer's RAF Emergency Set. You can see in the enlarged Photograph (click on it) that it's had to be reinforced with copious amounts of liquid glue - itself stiffened with sprue shavings, in order to fill the cracks of ages.

Finally a space-base, which I had hoped - when I saw it - was part of the base for my Marx Mystery Spaceship, however it doesn't seem to 'go', so I guess it's a more modern thing. Interestingly it has a hole in the middle for mounting some model or other, and has a wall hanger tucked underneath, so I'm sure a kit-guy will instantly recognize it, whether they choose to share the info with the rest of us remains to be seen (Oh yes!; I'm very cynical this week!).

Here we have the vac-formed mould for Linka walls and European style cobbled pavement, Linka being carried by Merit at one point, and - I believe - still going, now in the States and with a truncated range. They also used vac-forming for the Steeple mould and as part of the rather complicated Tower moulds.

Below to the left is a small piece taken from a larger base-plate, with a small cannon and a pile of cannon-balls, I know Bellona did a few historical pieces so it could be them, they did use this colour of plastic on at least one run, however it might be from a ship kit's base?

Finally - the tray from a Tesco packet of fish (a rather nice mackerel if I recall correctly!), sides cut away and you get a fine set of British pattern Dragons-teeth for an early war 'Sea-lion' scenario, there is a line of these type running straight through the middle of Guildford to this day!. This type of food packaging often has useful repeat pattern mouldings, or equally useful (larger) shapes (individual puddings) for war-games scenery, I've seen a fantastic Sci-Fi tower made - primarily - out of yogurt pots, a plastic wine glass and chocolate-moose bowls! Word of warning, these are often ABS, polypropylene or PE based plastics, so gluing is much easier with a hot-glue gun.

Guildford, Surrey, these are to be found behind the Travelers Lodge down at Ladymead, on the footpath to the River Wey. In the valley itself, where the main German Trust was expected, they follow the continental fashion of having shorter ones at the front (facing the East-coast as you look along the downs) so that any vehicle failing to see them all covered in brambles would ride-up them and get 'beached', while on this steep slope - unsuitable for vehicles, they are all of the same height, as they are to force infantry to weave their way through them under 'effective fire' from brick pill-boxes and entrenchments (now overgrown) set further back.

There are more remains of this line near the 'secret bunker' you can get guided tours round!..every English Heritage weekend! (or Guildford Arts Festival week? Either way - It's about now each year), beyond the London Road railway station, but on the other side of the road.