L is for Look What I Saw!

Driving out to Alresford for a drop this evening, I saw signs for 'Ride with Thomas' and 'Steam Spectacular' on the road between Farnham and Alresford, and assumed it was something to do with the Watercress Line.

 

Then, while at the customer's house, a gurt' weezin' and a'puffin' was occurring behind their house, and I said "That Thomas is a noisy chap isn't he?", and she said it's not Thomas, it's Nigel Gresley, you should to talk to my husband about it!

 

Anyway, I got on with my route, only to find the road over the line was closed, so taking it as a sign, I parked up at the barrier, ran up to the bridge and managed to get these . . .  

 

 . . . somewhere in all that, which is mostly coal-smoke, not steam, is Sir Nigel Gresley, one of the few remaining streamlined biggies from the height of the steam era! And it was a still evening, after the storm of the last 48-hours, so it (the smoke) wasn't clearing, and while I had to get on, I knew I was 20-minutes ahead on my route (it's all computer and satellite driven these days), so I formed a quick plan, and shot-off to one of my favourite tea-break spots, more in hope than anticipation, and started to clean my windows, which I'd already told the internal camera needed doing - you need an excuse to stop, off schedule! When I heard them . . .

 

 . . . and managed to get these three off! Halfway between Ropley and Bishop's Sutton, on the embankment which runs from Arlesford to the Four Marks hill, I was about a quarter of a mile away, so they're not the best, but they are still awesome beasts!

 

Full steam from both of them, I think the leader might be 506 (30506) LSWR Urie S15 Class, with the 'Gresley behind, and the setting sun (6pm'ish) shining right at them! Apparently, they'll be performing again, this coming weekend;

 

https://watercressline.co.uk/special-days/travel-behind-sir-nigel-gresley/

 

Now, I'm no 'spotting' train-buff, but there are certain things, old tanks, tall ships, steam long-boats, Massey Furguson 135/165's, which are literally living history, and you only fail to be moved if there's something wrong with your soul, so if you're not doing anything next weekend, get your arse to Arlesford!

 

That's it - happenstance! Made a reasonable shift, memorable!

S&S is for Scale and Size!

 Can you see what I did there! As well as our regular visits to the canyons of New York, there has been this for . . . about seven or eight years now, I think - the annual Christmas toy-related display by the Fleet & Crookham Local History Group in Fleet library, which this year is all about size/scale of like subjects.

Another 'lazy' post, in that it can be blurb-light, it is what it is! I would add that the FCLHG do other presentations through the year, local development, the medieval period, how the maps change, that kind of thing.

It's getting like we've seen most of it before, hence a different theme every year? I think the Furby's are new this year, they used to be called Gonk's, when I was a lad, and were made by Travellers on old loo-rolls for the fairground-prize trade. They were a good introduction to loss and death, as their little paper faces slowly dog-eared, ripped or even slid off, and eventually damp got to their cores or an adult's foot or arse flattened them!

 

The Exhibition normally comes down in the first or second week of January, so if you're passing, worth a quick visit.

T is for Two - Fairylite

By the time I was a kid, Fairylite (like Chad Valley), were as likely to be importing (rebranded Jimson, for instance) as claiming the stuff for themselves, but in the early days, they were a British producer, and recently I've come into two nice pieces of early, marked 'Made in England' output.

 

A lovely little HO/OO-compatible steam road-roller, before and after cleaning. I don't know how many toy road-rollers there were, but as they were still being used as the M4 started to snake its way through my local countryside as a kid, and the various duel-carriageway schemes on the A30 happened (I think diesels had replaced steam by the time they built the M3), they were still an everyday thing, rather than the exotic traction engines which were already appearing on mugs and tea-towels and being marketed as 'old-fashioned', so I guess most toy firms had one!

 

Then, at the same show, Adrian Little of Mercator Trading, gave me this, after no interest was shown in it by the general-public - who were never a good guide to true value!

 

It's a slightly 'stag', variation of the slide-puzzles more normally consisting of words, sums or a single picture, here you can keep going to your heart's content, making sillier combinations, once you've lined them up correctly . . . a lovely little novelty item. It's missing a set of lower legs, to allow for the movement of the other tiles, resulting in at least one child/dwarf each time you stop!

 

Proof, if proof were needed!

S is for Sandown Park - May 2023 - Civilian Vehicles

The civilian vehicles I picked-up at Sandown back in May are probably more interesting than the military stuff, but it's a question of personal taste, and it's not like you're going round a show trying to work out what's cool or not for a future Blog post! Although you do sometimes buy things for a blog post, mostly it's filling-gaps, ticking boxes or grabbing interesting, or unusual curiosities or novelties!

 

 

A couple of bagged Hong Kong rack toy vehicles, seperate purchases I think, but shot together for this post. The Surry wagon is my second, and with the first in storage, I'll wait until I can compare them before I open and construct one. The tractor I may have loose somewhere, but I thought I'd better get this one to tie-in the Thomas-Poplar looking driver.

 

A pair from Tudor Rose, A London Taxi and Bedford / Morris (?) type minivan, the Taxi will be off to New York soon in exchange for the Marx one we looked at the other day, and it has slightly more realistic wheels/tyres than the van!

 

A few shots of the van, with the Taxi's belly-mark inset, bottom right. The marking on the van was quite poor, due to play I think. Garden/beach toys, the van has working rear doors and a sliding side-door. Those wheels though - "Purest Grreeeen, Blackadder!"

 

This was lovely, an Archer steam road-roller, I don't know if they were imported from the US at the time, I suspect not, but rather imported more recently by a collector, I will try to get a Tudor Rose (or Kleeware) one, and a Lipkin one, so we can compare with the Merit one! The red button on the nose is the knob of a pull-cord wind-in motor, not that common a motive system, but there were a few back then. I also have the Pyro (and Banner?) in 'army' khaki!

 

Not sure about this at all, the card looks fake, home-printed on a PC, but a small company may well have done something like that back in the early years of computing and desk-top publishing, yet the contents are genuine enough, and maybe it was last-minute clearance or something of a 'Friday Afternoon' or 'Monday Morning' project? Also despite the busy graphics, there's no real branding, but it's hardly a typical generic either?

 

Poplar Plastics; this looks to be an early and not wholly stable plastic, but only the v-point of the blue moulding seems to have distorted slightly? A nice model anyway, and I'm a bit of a sucker for plastic racing cars!

 

Airfix - another! I put a Hillco cowboy on it in the absence of a motorcycle rider. I've picked up a few of these now, and that page on the Airfix blog will get an update with new images. Blue body with red wheels seems to be the commonest combination, I have several now, different shades of both though.

Another Poplar product, this shares the baseplate/chassis with the Easter Bunny egg-cart we looked at a few years ago, albeit with slightly different mountings. The wheels and chassis are polystyrene, the horse and cart-box, polyethylene.

 

The cart doesn't seem to come with or be fitted for hay-racks, but has seating, presumably from it days as a Thomas Toy when it would have come with a set of those seated PVC rubber kids?

C is for Christmas Exhibition - 4 of 5 - Frank Hornby's Meccano

I'm not sure who invented the first pierced-steel construction system, nor which side of the pond, or Channel, it first occurred on and how much the first influenced the subsequent lines of their rivals, but just as stone-age kids played with stones and bronze-age kids played with bronze figurines (well; they might have, if they were rich enough!), so it was only a matter of time before someone in the industrial age invented something which looked like Meccano, and I suspect several sets appeared independently, at around the same time, with similar properties, but here in the UK we tend to think (and be told) Frank Hornby was first?

Certainly, it was [arguably] the most successful, and despite a few hiccups . . . survives today, as a French-owned brand with a tenuous link back to French Hornby or French Dinky, and would survive for longer - if it went final tits-up tomorrow - through the many clones coming out of mile-long factories in Szechwan and Guangdong!

Ancient and modern . . . little and large!

Although several of the components are vintage, especially the boiler, it has been put together with the modern bolts, which contrary to my previous comment in the preceding post aren't cross-cut Phillip's, but small (3 or 4 mil') hex-drives.

The racing car is built to a vintage plan but seems to be mostly recent components, or at least components I recognise from my childhood Meccano - 1960/80's, while the 'plane would seem to be referencing Tin-Tin's, and thus is probably from a larger French set?

Some more shots of both.

Some more small pieces and a wounderful vintage aeroplane which has a many model-specific parts or 'shapes' as the Metalcraft Spirit of St. Louis in the previous post, something I have to confess I wasn't aware of.

We had tons of yellow/blue, our cousins inherited a multi-drawer cabinet of red/green heavy-gauge vintage, and while I knew there were the odd specialist part (the motorway-construction and army sets in the 1970's had a pre-formed lorry-cab I think?), this is quite a specific model, of a De Havilland Moth? Hawk, Puss . . . Tiger?

R is for Roco as Rack Toys

Should be an F is for Follow-up really, but there you go! Totally forgot these when looking at the others a few weeksback so we'd better look at them now!

They're not actually Roco-minitanks, but may be supplied by them or licensed from them, I just don't know. Model Power usually source their stuff from China, but - unlike the O-Gauge sets - these have no origin indicated so it's anyone's guess.

Issued as four sets, in green or tan, these are all 'peaceful' poses taken from the previously looked-at Roco sets based on the Monogram/Revell kit sets, and designed purely to enhance a model railway layout (or 'model railroad' layout, they're American after all!) by wandering around the landscape or concourse, or load the vehicles in it; the seated figures.

If you want violence on your railway layout, you can have it! I'm guessing 5697 is the same set in green or tan, but these guys (over-scale at 1:72nd) are dressed like the internal security services of some former Soviet republic circa 1999!

They are scale-downs of the common small scale rack-toy figures from the 1990's, being Airfix Para's and US infantry, originally 1:32nd scale and given generic 'piss-pot' helmets. The artwork hints at an assortment of poses going to at least an 11-count, with the Para's Bren-gunner, officer and kneeling firer also available - they certainly were in the standard, unpainted, rack-toy sets.

Painting is limited here, to a bit of black on boots and weapons and some flesh spotted on hands and face.

Want a couple of women for your Wild West town or ACW army and not got enough Merten or Preiser? There are two in this 'historical' set from the more conventional range of railway accessories, while the engineer with shovel would fit any era, as would the driver.

Although in the case of ACW armies, who'd take a baby to a battle! Yet, prior to the 20th century; battles were lost for the crowds of onlookers getting in the way of the manoeuvring!