C is for Cable Drums!

Tri-ang Railways, with actual insulating-wire cables.

 

My fascination with cable drums goes back to our train set, one of those magical events which only happen a few times in a lifetime, and which are as good as any previous daydream fantasies about them.

 

Triang-Hornby.

 

Mum was not treated well by Dad, not mentally, not physically, and not financially, in an era when the man owned everything, the wife was supposed to stay at home, the Police would shrug and mutter "domestic", and the husband's income was supposed to provide housekeeping. Consequently all our big toys tended to come from sacrifice, auction, or our father's occasional largesse.

 

Different designs.

 

Those odd Christmases when he would turn up from some foreign unaccompanied posting with two identical Lego sets, or two Action Man vehicles . . . one year it was two Chemistry sets, I got Lott's, my brother the larger Merit set, and we spent the next few years occasionally trying to gas or kill each other, ourselves, or just burn the house down with methylated spirits!

 

Colour variations.

So Mum would scrimp and save for the things she thought we needed, or wanted to get us, and we had hand-me-downs from other kids in the village. The Church fete was a standard for toys, and we never had a new bike, they would come from the auctions, get stripped-down and rebuilt, sometimes painted post-office red, and when Mum had a bit of spare cash a deal would be made of going to the cycle shop in Fleet and getting a pair of Ever Ready cycle 'lamps', or a little tool kit, which hung from the back of the saddle!

 

Merit Cable Laying Party.

 

And don't think this is a sob-story, I can't fault my childhood, it was privileged and vaguely middle-class, albeit, with Mum jumping through hoops in the background, which I wouldn't understand or appreciate, until much later. 

 

Merit Cable Drums (one open, one closed)

 

One year, when we were about 7/8, we came down to breakfast (after waking at about 2 a.m. and devouring our Christmas stockings), to find the summer table cloth over the dining table, where Christmas dinner would later be held, but it was clear the dinning table was A) rather lumpy, and B) seemed to have slightly larger dimensions than it had had the night before.

 

Wardie Matermodels.

The open one is made of resinated card. 

After breakfast we were directed to a large parcel which had appeared under the tree overnight, which was labelled to both of us, and instructed to attack the wrapping-paper from both ends simultaneously, which we did, to reveal a large, homemade wooden box, inside of which was a complete, second-hand model railway collection, with a couple of Locomotives, various items of rolling stock, and a small corrugated cardboard box of various Airfix, Tri-Ang and Merit accessories, passengers, cargo etc.

 

Airfix trackside kit.

There was an old die-cast level-crossing, some signals, platform sections (not enough for a complete station, but enough for imagination!), all sorts, a lead water tower, I can't remember it all now, and it would get added-to, over the years. But one of the wagons was the Triang-Hornby cable drum flat, with the two green drums, and, in little presents hidden on the tree over the next few days, was revealed the Merit Station Staff with barrow, and the Cable Party with the red cable drum.

 

Trix TT-gauge.

Image - Vectis Auctions, I think!

 

The load can be transferred to an OO flat car or bogie well-wagon!

Mum had bought a whole train set, from the - now long gone - Pearsons Auctions in Fleet, and under the table cloth, was a chip-board layout, painted with roads, a pond, fields etc . . . in household gloss paint, the pond was just a bright blue blob, but, it had a figure-8, inside a large oval, with sidings, and was the best thing we'd ever seen!

 

Kibri, real wire?

 

An old Hammant & Morgan transformer was wired-up and plugged in and after a certain amount of sanding the track, and oiling points, it worked! We played with it until mid-afternoon, and when the smell of dinner started to warm the house, so we had to put it away, slide the board down the hallway wall, and wait until Boxing day to have another go!

 

Roco International.

Obviously cable-laying, and the delivery of cables, became a regular feature of the railway, which ened-up fixed to the joists in the attic! And I've never got cable-drums out of my system. There's an Eldon cable truck or two, mentioned passim, and for Blogging another day, and various track-side drums from various sources, including the other Merit set, and over the years I've managed to get most version of Hornby, Tri-ang and Triang-Hornby flat cars with cable drums!

 

Wiking.

 

I guess it's also, that when we were kids, cable drums were literally everywhere. They filled lay-bys, pale pine, newly delivered ones, neatly stacked, rotting, collapsing piles of old gray carcases. they were all down the sides of the railways, men burned piles of empty one in fields, there were lorry-loads of them on every A-Road!

 

Bachmann.

 

As we transitioned from Edwardian, horse-drawn Britain, to the 'white heat' of post-war technology, everyone needed cables, the railways, British Telecom/the Post Office, the National Grid was being established, street lighting, illuminated traffic island bollards, traffic lights and road signs, and there were even rumours of traffic control cables under the new M4, and it was all in your face!

 

Preiser, modern steel drums.

 

It's all still there, but it gets replaced or updated in small sections, from reusable sheet steel, or steel tube drums on trailers, it gets pulled though from a side street, rather than trench-dug the length of the High Street, so you're not so aware of it happening these days, and wooden drums have almost disappeared! As have the little stripey tents the workmen hid in on their endless tea-brakes!

 

And I really will try to get the rest of the HO-OO figure posts done this Christmas! It was going through those posts which lead me to this post! There's a follow-up post on the military train stuff too.

 

Aaaaannnnnnd, a few days later: 'Here's a military train, please readers, send me your train stuff before Hugh does any more', and only four days after 69 people were killed on a Spanish train? Tasteless. You can hear his brain not working from the other side of the country!

 

https://projectswordtoys.blogspot.com/2026/10/the-trains-in-spain.html

D is for Driving Test

Not sure how a couple of these images will show, but you'll get the gist if you're not already familiar with the set, which I thought we'd looked at here at Small Scale World, but we haven't, or I can't find it, it may have been in One Inch Warrior magazine, and it may not have been my penmanship or photography on that occasion, while today Jon Atwood has helped with images!

This was me a couple of years ago, combining some loose bits with the stuff that had been accruing in the attic (card box) and the master collection from storage in a Really Usefull Box Co's 35litre 'Euro-Box' which takes A4 suspension files one way and foolscap the other, a brilliant design, which accounts for them going from a little company, you could ring up and order factory-seconds from, delivered to your door from the Midlands, to a multinational with a second factory in the US, who now tell you your nearest stockist on the phone and explain politely that they no longer do deliveries, and no longer do factory seconds!

The railway stuff is all in the little 4x5½" self-sealing bags, upon which the Driving Test game sits, with everything else Jenga'd on top! You can see how the 'Banner/Bell' artillery are about to be brought together at '1' and the ark/circus animals at '2', but it's the Driving Test we're looking at today, and I'm just going to load the rest of the images and text them up as they land?

 

1970's catalogue image, and we have cool dudes with longish hair and polo necked jumpers! The game is fun, and it does work, there's a hidden pantograph underneath, the two sectioned, sprung arms of which manipulate a magnet in response to physical commands given through the 'gear stick'. With practice, you can even get the car or motorcycle to point forwards (or in the 'direction of travel') at all times.

Late 1950's or - more likely 1960's box, and she's ready to go to the nunnery, he's dressed for a day at the office . . . it was a different world, and I was there! I think my most embarrassing sartorial experience of that era, was the pink velvet cummerbund I had to wear as a page-boy at Aunty Christine's wedding, it hung around in my chest of drawers for years, although I don't know what happened to it, it sort of disappeared around 1980!

This is from feeBay and I have a feeling that while the motorcycles and cars are plastic (with small staple/paperclip type wire inserts of ferrous metal, to give the magnet a 'hook'), the rest may actually be bought-in from Mastermodels (BJ Ward/Wardie, seen earlier in this series, and who will be in the round-up at the end too), which would go a little further to explaining some of the cross-fertilization?

 

Particularly if the ideas-men and buyers from the 'toy division' weren't aware of what the railway guys were doing, or if they hadn't been told about Collis Plastics likely efforts for both companies, in the railway sizes? Conjecture, not gospel! None of these figure-sculpts were carried-over to the model railway range.

The board, over the years they have been issued painted and unpainted and, apart from the possibly part-metal set above (the metal items would have been non-magnetic Zamac/Mazak, so wouldn't get picked-up by the magnet), they were - commonly - all plastic components, and are simpler copies of Mastermodels, again suggesting a 'firewall' on information exchange between the toy guys and the railway guys at Randall's?

I used to think these were also Merit, I have a few, but this faux-Blue Box set turned-up on evilBay, sans cars, and proved me wrong! A Hong Kong copy, was there anything between the war and 1970 they didn't have a stab at reproducing?

 

Obviously, the original idea is to get round a set course and/or park in the plastic garage (fixed to the board), without knocking into any pedestrians or street-furniture, or leaving the marked roadways! Many thanks to Jon for images, and Ed Burg has, coincidentally, been showing the contents of a similar-concept, but table/carpet Marx set on his Blog over the last week or so.

K is for Kemlows Illustrations?

These photographs are a sort of mystery, clearly sequential with those seen in the Brookes' book on Kemlows, but not apparently the actual shots used, I suspect they were sold to me by the Brookes, at the Alresford toy train day, many years ago, and while I say they are a bit of a mystery, I vaguely recall a shoebox type thing with pictures for sale?

 

Anyway, they were in the archive and can be shared with you after scanning.

So, for instance with this last one, in the book you get two shots, one of the five box types found, the other an end-on shot of the cycle rack with two green and two blue bicycles, neither with the white mudguards? The weird thing is, I would say all six of these shots are better than the corresponding ones in the book?

C is for Cast Communications Cabins!

Mr. B.J. Ward's 'Wardie Products' Mastermodels range of OO-gauge accessories weren't going to feature much in this 'mini season' of railway figure posts, as Jon hadn't sent me many images, and I didn't have much here, and what Jon sent will be in an overview toward the end of the sequence, however he did send me a pair of Telephone Boxes, and in looking for other things I found more Wardie stuff, and shot what little I have here for what will be two posts tonight - if I pull my finger out - which will take us to the not-so-subconscious next target, of 60-posts for the month, before midnight!

So, this is the little treasure Jon sent in one of the donations we looked at a while ago, briefly, because these posts were quickly envisioned! One's a bit tatty, but I do have loose ones in the main collection, so I'll make this right again with a couple of near-minters!

 

As with the other 'phone boxes (AA, RAC, Police), there is a paper wrap-around with the detail needed, printed on, and this casting was used for an information kiosk as well, a later version had a flat roof.

 

I can't remember if Adrian, Jon or Peter handed these larger, touristy ones, to me or if I found them somewhere, or a combination of the preceding, but they're not bad for model railways, maybe 28mm-compatible? One has been a key-ring, the other must have been part of a boxed-set of UK icons, as it's not had its roof drilled! And they are Chinese in origin!

 

Between them is a funny little plastic kiosk, of a modern city type, possibly based on something Asian, closer to the maker's heart? And the sort of thing which might be from a rack-toy, but might be from a comic/periodical giveaway?

 

It's a gratuitous shot of some elephants!

H is for Huminiatures!

Miniature Hugh-Mans! Only an overview, visually, because all my existing collection, including the stuff that was here (or round the corner now!) in the attic, was combined and sent to storage a year or so ago! Also it was damaged in the 2007 summer-floods, so is a bit depressing, although it's mostly survived, it lost it's pristineness!

But both Adrian Little And Jon Attwood have between them found all the following, so we can have a half-decent look at their output, and the sort of revelation following, so many thanks to both of them.

The box isn't quite as bad as it looks here, enhancing the contrast so you could more-easily read the information on the labels has resulted in something which looks like a bloodstained artefact recovered from a murder victim in Midsomer or some New England coastal community!

 

Five shillings was a lot of money back in the day, and while these are believed to have been on sale from the war or soon after the end of it, they wouldn't have been that affordable, to the average buyer, even in the 1960's or 70's, more of a luxury, or something architects could put on the bill?

 

They are however (left and upper shots) exquisitely painted, compared to their J&L Randall Merit counterparts or Wardie Mastermodel clones. And I've just chosen my words very carefully, following what's come to light just in the last few weeks as a result of the Minikin find AND re-reading the Brookes book on Kemlows.

 

Before I continue - the lady in a pink top and grey skirt (top right) fixing her hair in a compact-mirror is an interloper, I'm not sure whose figure she is, perhaps Merten? I suspect the figures in the lower image are early Merit, they are quite well painted, but heavier sculpts, and brighter colours on pink plastic.

 

But, it seems the original story, which I got from the Brookes' at the lovely exhibition open-days held in Alresford, Hampshire by Bob Leggett, which was that Merit had got the tooling when BJ Ward went bust, and that the workers being laid-off without pay had carried them 'over the road' to Randall's, was in fact, a tad fanciful.

 

Having said that, I cast no aspersions, the story told, was made clear to be hearsay, and was some ten-years before the book was ready, so before the Brookes were even talking to Stephen Lowe (of the Kemlows family), but reading how Collis Plastics first played a roll in, and were later bought by Kemlows (the firm behind the production of Mastermodels), has made it all clear.

Not clear here - should have used a ruler like some over-efficient evilBayer - but these are the smaller TT-gauge, in the master collection I know I also have the larger O-gauge, both unpainted and painted, home and factory.

 

The clarity came in realising that there is NO crossover in poses, to/from Slaters and Minikins, and that therefore BJ Ward (who carried most of the poses of both!), knowingly, or unknowingly (through his tool/pattern maker Collis) copied, cloned or pirated BOTH firms, to produce the figures, for his otherwise pretty unique range of die-cast, tin, whitemetal, wire and wooden railway accessories. Because both firms were active, earlier than Ward's enterprise!

 

And that's enough for now, as we are going to be looking briefly at both Mastermodels and Merit in the next few days/week or so, and can polish-off the rest then, as it's all in the Kemlows book, sort of. Suffice to say, we have to believe, that for whatever reason, Slater's (a Northern-based firm) must have got their tooling from the early Collis Plastics just North of London?

A flat wagon courtesy of Jon, I may have one or two of these horse-drawn vehicles in the master collection, if so, and because they will be in flood damaged packaging, I will build them as a future project one day!

 

 

From the Carriage Foundation;

 

"Dog carts were so named because they were originally used for carrying sporting dogs in the boot, some would have louvred sides which provided ventilation. First built at the beginning of the 19th century as two-wheeled vehicles, they were later built with four wheels. They carried four passengers sitting in pairs, back to back, and were so useful for all country pursuits that they were found in every country house and used well into the motor age, many of the later examples never being used for the purpose for which they were originally designed."

As well as the O, OO (HO) and TT-compatible figures Slater's also did N-gauge stuff and, I think, the odd-bit of the bigger 1, H, or G stuff, at some point? But I'd have to check with the collection to be sure!

W is for Who Made Who!

Bit of a surprise when these turned-up, as they looked familiar, but, err . . . better! Obviously I knew of Minikins, they are in Garratt, where he both spelt them wrong, and was pretty disparaging! O'Brian gives them quite a write-up, but mentions he's omitted the HO set (singular), so these should be new to most and new to the Internet, but I think we did look at them briefly in a show report, so they're not new to Blog!

 

Minikin or Minikins as they are sometimes dubbed, also, really nice presentation boxes for a make better known for dowdy or 'transport' packaging, but they may have been given this packaging at their destination, International Models Inc., of New York?

 

As Minikins were known for copies and derivatives, these would appear to be piracies of BJ Ward's Wardie Mastermodels? Except, as we shall see, they are better, so a new question mark present's itself? One set of station-staff and line workers, the other of passengers, they are reasonably painted, but just far-cleaner castings than Mastermodels.

 

The thing is, I never knew of them, so I've never looked that closely at my Wardie's, and with quality, scale and base-style (among other details) differing across the Mastermodels output, I may well have a few Minikins in there already, but these are probably the only two sets, so we may have them all on view here?

Now, they are not all Mastermodels sculpts the three railway employees for instance, and the central pair on the bottom row are questionable, Wardie did a version of the lady, but she's not quite the same. However, neither are they Comet-Authenticast sculpts, which would be the obvious direction to go in if these were repackaged AHI (see below). They are closer to the Hornby Dublo actually, aren't they?

 

A couple of seated figures, are they Mastermodels sculpts, or cleaned up Comet? They don't seem to be either, which points to original sculpts, and if two are, the rest could be, especially with the question-mark over the station staff?

Obviously the tied-in ones are the Minikins and the three loose ones are Kemlows' finest, except that next to the Japanese production, they aren't that fine at all, are they?  Rougher finished, with huge release-pin marks, heavier tool-handles and a marginally greater 'woodeness'? It's as if the Ward stuff are the copies?

In the Brooke's book 'The Illustrated Kemlows Story' these marks are credited to AHI (note above), but I suspect that was because he was familiar with AHI imports, of which these bear a remarkable resemblance - to wit; being the same!

 

But AHI (Azrak-Hamway International) were a US jobber (importer), Minikin was a Japanese brand, and (through work on the Khaki Infantry, not my non-existent knowledge of most 'BMSS' subject-matter!) I've always thought the better AHI stuff may have been or had a cross-over with Minikins, so the first thing to suggest, is that AHI's imported 'HO' railway figures, were Minikins product. And it would make the correcting of me on the ACW stuff more problematic for the corrector, as AHI had to be getting them from somewhere!

While dates give us the next clue, and with Minikins operating in the late 1940's and Kemlow's helping Ward with Mastermodels after 1951, it has to be suggested that Wardie are the copier here?

 

Also, because we will be looking at other arms of this tree in the next few days, it would mean that those copies of the Merit driving-game figures (themselves copied from Wardie) which come out of Hong Kong with a petrol-pump (a'la Blue Box) may have come straight from these?

Anyway, it's all only thoughts on new evidence, and if anyone would like to throw their tuppence-worth into the mix they're welcome! I'm just asking who made who? And I'm not looking to denegrate Garratt, O'Brian or the Brook's, they are the sources I turn-to for the earlier work on the puzzle, before adding my own tuppence-worth!

H is for How They Come In - London, March, Everything Else

A bit of a mixed bag to finish off, and we'll see which order they load themselves in! I'm not imagining it am I? Computing is getting harder not easier, it might be easy for 'smart phone' owners, but for people who actually work on/with PC's or laptops it's becoming increasingly glitchy and fragmented, the Internet is becoming less a tool for the advancement of civilisation, and rather an entertainment vessel for people glued to their idiot-phones!

Well, we're back to the yesterday system and they loaded in the order they should have, bargain! I know I did need a Vitacup reindeer with both antlers intact, and can't remember if I've already rectified the omission, so I may have two or three now, but this was going cheap.

 

Three little rack-toy old-fashioned cars, I think they may be crude copies of the Charben's 'Old Crocks', but I have to check, the orange one is the same moulding as the blue one, but seen from the rear.

 

Already joined by the two Chris Smith sent, this is a different-coloured plastic and mane/tail paint, so both lots only increasing the whole sample. Exin Castillos 40mm medieval figure; Prince on horse.

 

Premium flat dinosea-saurs! I mended the broken Plesiosaur I picked up a while ago, now I have an undamaged one - often the way! While the Ichthyosaur looks suitably mean and vicious!

Bog-standard rack-toy accessory, but seems to have factory paint, so I thoght I'd hang on to it and see if I can find it's set over time, Hing Fat had a copy, fantasy set, at one point, with a  'Halloween' tree that had a splash of paint, so it did happen occasionally!

 

We looked at these Lone Star African clones with a lot of help from Chris a while back, but worth getting more when you see them cheap, as there may be something new in them/their marks (I don't think so), and because one day you may have a plan to paint some up!

 

Lido or copy on the left, probably Tudor Rose on the right, nothing exciting, and we've looked at both under their tags in the past, including various copies of the Lido and a Tudor Rose bagged set. I've mentioned before that the Lido are among my favourites.

 

Hornby and Mastermodels, the Hornby five showing signs of lead-rot (a sandy whiteness to the exposed surfaces), while the Wardie stuff is safer, being die-cast alloy, but they can crack-up too, with their own 'disease'! A dip-wash with white vinegar and a new gloss paint-job, all over, might save the lead?

 

Cereal Premium!

Someone gave me these, I think, and I didn't look to check the base mark to see if they were Archie McFee/Accoutremants or BuM Slot? But the re-issues of the old Giant Mongols, which give us hope the spaceship, space tank and Viking longship mould-tool's are still out there somewhere?