. . . which looks like this! The two items
which aren't further looked at in the next four images are firstly; the late
green/red Meccano set (bottom
centre), I know it's late as it has a yellow plastic tray insert to hold the components,
but the earlier colour scheme with grey wheels. My brother and I had yellow
vac-forms but blue/yellow plates and silver-anodised beams, so ours must have
come just after this set.
Note also the aircraft engine, propeller
and wing-struts (along with non-standard wheels?), all job-specific parts, but
the piece I like most is the bolt-on RAF roundel!
The other item of note here is a catalogue
of exhibits for an exhibition of construction toys at the Science Museum, issued by the Ministry
of Education no less! I can't make out the date but it looks to be either
1945 or '55, and would be a wonder to view now . . . are the items still in
their archive?
Trix catalogue and parts, as I mused a couple of posts ago; I think this
is a licensed product re-branded to Trix
(or from Trix?) and that a US company
is also known for these triple-pierced beams? The cog and disc are very similar
to Meccano parts, but the spanner has the added value of being included* into a
model . . . so long as you have a second to tighten the nuts!
*I tried 'assembleable' but it seems to be
a new-word too far!
Minibrix; we didn't have this system as kids but many of our friends did, I
found it a bit boring, as (like Bayko,
missing from this year's exhibition at Fleet Library, but seen in past
displays) it can only make endless variations of a few basic building types -
no cranes, no spaceships, a crude crocodile maybe, if you tried hard enough and
had both a good imagination and good visio-spatial planning skills, but not
realistically set up to model anything other than another 'box' with or without
pitched roof!
In its defence it was made out of a very
stable vulcanised rubber, like vehicle tyre-rubber (unlike that Italian stuff
which has melted vast tracts of Toy Soldier history to sticky, furry lumps of
nothing!), and while you sometimes find it with a perished surface (a sort of
flaking hardened 'varnish' as a top layer), most is as useable now as it as
when it was made 50 or 60 years ago.
Note the door; along with the windows,
small points top and bottom of the element locate into dimples along the
surface-edges of bars or bricks. And - like truck-tyres - it was bloody heavy!
We saw the ballast/mineral wagon in an
earlier post, here's most of a passenger coach! The image seems to be of an
auction lot and shows a whole set which also builds a windmill, a rail crane
and section of track looking to be about G-gauge or 'Big' in plastic parlance!
Masterbuilder handbook and parts; again very similar to Meccano, but actually the 'rims' are better modelled than those of
Binns Road's system, in separate scales they wouldn't look out of place on a
Morris Minor or a Massey Ferguson!
The whole collection is still on exhibition
now and to be seen in Fleet Library (North Hampshire - Berkshire - Surry
triangle), and should - if previous years are to be a guide - continue 'till
the end of January 2020.
