B is for Back to America!

We are getting there, but there's still about eight posts-worth of stuff before the final tying-up post, which I may do as a 'Page' at the top of this page? And it's all scans today, and all from over the pond.

This is a kit from Ayers of California, but the text refers to Weston as being behind the interior fixtures and fitting, so they must have supplied the little train guard, or 'Conductor', as he's in an American car!

 

Just box-ticking with these two survivors, the upper one has a manuscript note on the reverse in James Chase's hand, stating "Merten 818-819", so presumably the card carried the tourist set, while the other has five closed staples and may have held something fine, like sign-posts and not figures at all? It's coded on the back A34:250, in a rubber-stamp, but my archive has little else on Aristo-Craft. We've previously seen Preiser circus wagons from Aristo-Craft, and did somebody mention Comet/Authenticast in an earlier comment? So clearly a jobber, repackaging all sorts.

 

As far as I know the only figures they ever did, small shot injection-moulded, and carried in Walther's/Terminal Hobby Shop, for the longest time, but like so much of this stuff, sliding out of sight in the last decade or so.

 

These Lytler & Lytler are funny-ironic, as I had this catalogue/image, long before I got the 'unknown' figures, which were subsequently ID'd by Mike Cozart, and I revisited the same image with some crops here, it looks like I may have the whole range, including the drug-store cigar-Indian!

Another one from Walther's, these are Master Creations (MC), and I could have done a few scans, but this is probably the best of a line which also didn't change. Cast brass . . . you'd have to get the smithing tools out to work these!

W is for Weston Figures, then Campbell Scale Models, Now Gone?

I don't know enough about these to do more than post the scans as a guide, and to tick that box in this series of posts, they seem to have been around as Weston since the 1940's, and we looked at a few sleeper-car/restaurant-car figures back at the beginning of the Blog;

https://smallscaleworld.blogspot.com/2009/02/w-is-also-for-weston.html

Unknown, but 1970's - from the price?

Mid 1950's flyer.

1960's US model railway magazine.

The 1975 Walther's catalogue has them as a division of Campbell Scale Models who also did building kits and a range of scenics, so they had obviously bought the old company, or its IP/mould-bank, to give them an instant figure range!

 

From a British model railway magazine about 20/25 years ago.

 

 

Walther's again, 2000's.

 

They seem to have finally folded in the early summer of last year, whether anyone will pick-up the tools seems to be for the birds, or the Gods to decide?

W is for Weston

I have a suspicion these date from the late 1950's or early 1960's. They are factory painted metal and would have been competing with the Comet/Authenticast stuff. I think they are still in Walther's, but as unpainted castings, however, my Walther's box is still under a pile of Architecture and AFV boxes, so I can't check yet!!

If it wasn't for the very different code numbers on the back, this group look as if they go together, and as it is, certainly tell a little story; The guy on the left is off to play a few hands of late-night poker in the drawing-room car (he has those sleeve covers on, whatever they're for?) while his missus has been caught by the waiting staff with her PJ's on the floor and not a lot else to cover her modesty!!

The code on the rear of the pack. I do have some similar figures by Comet and another early US manufacturer, but - you guessed it - they're missing! When I find them I'll post them and cross reference with this entry.