T is for more Tractors

While looking for the piece of rolling stock which seems to have fallen off the face of the earth, I kept coming across tractors and thinking "damn, I've just done them", anyway this evening I thought weeeellll...I've found all these tractors, lets put 'em up, only to find I'd hidden them all again!! But I dug out enough for one more post, so...

This is the Airfix tractor which comes with early issues of the Stirling Bomber, but was dropped from later boxes. I think it's complete as there seem only to be bomb-trolley parts left in the tub concerned (because it can take me 10 years to finish a 'Bright idea' I have little trays for each project), however the slot behind the seat is worrying me...and a seat would be on my list - if I was the driver!!

Hong Kong Copy of the Corgi 1:48 scale tractor, (similar to a Massey 135) with the most over the top coupling for the plough I've ever seen, it's a male/female spigot about 2cm high (behind the chair)!

Prieser Hanomag and two trailers, one metal and one wooden, also two sets of wheels allows you to crate up to 4 visually different wagons.

Tractor from the Blue Box copy 'Happy Farm', similar to some of those I posted the other day, but the rake-harrow is non-articulated. Close to 1:72 and bearing a passing resemblance to early John Deer designs.

T is for Trains

Bit of a cheat this one 'cause most of them are more Triang, but there are some non-Triang among them. The one I really wanted to post I can't bloody find, despite going through most of my stuff twice in the last few days, hence no posts!! Have to save it for neverwhen!!

This is a Jouef/Playcraft low sided plank wagon, being prepared for the HaT Colonial Artillery (which - co-incidentally - was posted on the HaT forum yesterday, and it looks good), I started with Humbrol body-filler but it was a bit hard, so I painted it with liquid-poly cement and it went too soft! Finished up with terracotta Miliput and toothpicks for the cross-bracing. The bogie's have been removed so I can give the whole thing a military paint-job and Hornby couplings.

Behind is a Triang bogie-bolster wagon, which is another one you can build up with sand-bags, I may use this for the same colonial train, or use it to try and replicate the oft-reproduced picture of a 1939/40 era German train loaded with troops (I think it was originally from Signal, and is in all the Purnell/Pan/Ballentine part-works of the '70's), using the ridiculous Revell 'firing on my mates shoulder' posed MG42, and similar posed on wall MG34 from Italeri?

Another Jouef for Playcraft, this is the entry-level clockwork locomotive, which comes in a reasonable shade of military green, and if you buy an old one for 50p at a car-boot sale...it comes ready weathered!!!! I think the track may be Playcraft as well, but it might be Triang, as it's a piece of child-hood surviving stuff, and we had Triang clockworks not Playcraft.

Comparison between the two best loco's for a military marshaling yard, without the need for lots of repainting, although you can also use black 'GS' types with most armies.

T is for Triang Battle Space

Some more movements on the Triang rail network.

Here we have some regular wagons pressed into service to move some HQ elements up the coast from Alex, protection is provided by a 6lbr. travelling forward of the locomotive.

These trucks are on the early, non-military well-wagons, in grey, orange and blue, Triang would issue many variations of their rolling stock, with further variations coming from places like New-Zealand.

Khaki well-wagons with East-German armour moving up to their start positions for a race to the Fulda Gap!

The first incarnation of 'Battle Space' was in a British racing green NATO scheme, this is the helicopter launcher and the searchlight wagon, it's missing its little bits, but the light still works. The helicopter was a bit of fun, couldn't fly for toffee, no working tail rotor to keep it strait so it would spin off at a rakish angle and fly into the locomotive bringing the whole train to a catastrophic halt in the middle of the station, which is why the man with newspaper and bowler hat is always missing his feet, which were glued to the platform in the factory!

Khaki version of the helicopter launcher and 'plane launcher, I'm missing the 'plane, but most people are, unless you want to pay Monopoly money for a mint boxed version! I have the body as it was plastic, but the wings were card and have not passed the test of time.

T is for Triang (or Tri-Ang)

Both are correct, both were used on packaging. Well...what have we here? Another of my favourites, that's what! The beauty of having your own blog!!! Triang Battle Space, the best range of trains anyone ever had to run round the living-room floor!

I couldn't find the correct rocket for the rocket-launchers, until I'd taken the photo's and put everything away, so here is the correct missile, I have no idea what the other (yellow one in below shots) one was from! Crescent's Space Rocket

These are early issues, when the items were stand alone rolling stock, 'Battle Space' had not yet arrived as a concept, the first aid wagon is - I think - a guards or parcel carriage with a new paint job.

The sniper who pops up and down due to the action of a track-side accessory on a counterweight under the wagon, the same mechanism was used for the giraffe of which this is a khaki version of the same wagon.

This is the sniper wagon (I'm missing the roof) and the exploding wagon, again a track-side gizmo tripped a switch and the whole thing blew sky high.

Finally the khaki rocket-launcher and the Command Car, this was nothing more complicated than the travelling post-office in military colours, it would pick up and drop off post-bags...sorry, secret dispatches!

T is for Totem Pole

One of my 'side collections', like trees, all totem poles are far too small for the figures they are issued with, so actually some of the best - height wise - for 1:76/72 scale figures are the poles issued with 54mm figures, although if you include realism, the only ones that come close out of all those below are the first one from Playmobile/Fisher Price/Exin, the Reisler and the second two from the left in the second photograph (unknown and Greg Wolf). All we need now are decent Northern or Backwoods/Woodland Indians to dance round them, as they have all been issued with Great Plains or Southern Indians who never used them!!!

Left to Right;
Playmobil, unknown european polystyrene (probably French), Labere School, unknown tourist item from Canada, Reisler, Commansi/Novalinea

Atlantic 1:32 (see 1:72 below), unknown - Marx re-issue?, Greg Wolf - "Handcrafted in Canada", Modern "China", two piracy's of the Britains pole, Feu Orange air-freshener - possibly made by Brevete S.G.D.G.?

Cherilea 60mm (See 54mm below), Britains piracy, Britains Herald - late polystyrene, Timpo, Timpo colour variant, Britains Piracy, Timpo Piracy.

Britains piracy, Unknown, Timpo Piracy, Two different unknown cereal giveaways (came on small sprues with other scenic items), unknown european vinyl - possibly Koho or German Marx late production, Charbens, Cherilea 54mm (see 60mm above), unknown metal - possibly also Cherilea?

Factory painted Korona Imperial giveaway, unpainted Jean original of previous pole, two Britains piracy's, Speedwell/Trojan/Kentoys/Hill?, modern vinyl from micro-machine type playset - Hong Kong/China, Marx - Miniature Masterpiece, two Atlantic 1:72 (see 1:32 above).

Notable absentee is a Britains original from the Swoppit/early Herald era, It's around somewhere with a few more big ones, but I can't find where I hid them! It came in two versions (big ovoid and smaller round base) and many colour variations, both base plastic colour and paint-job.

Baravelli Indians have been used as a size comparison, they are both piracy's of Airfix mounted Indians who have been given bases.

T is for Tractors

These are a few of my tractors, I have a soft spot for farm vehicles and figures, my fathers family have a farm near Retford in Nottingham and in the days before Health & Safety we spent many a holiday riding the grain trailers, running under the chaff-walkers of the combines and jumping out of the old Victorian loading stage into the grain mountain two stories below! I've also spent some time working farms in the past. This is the Paramount tractor, it came with various implements (which I will cover another day) and the figure is approximately 1:72, although the tractor is a bit big. These are by Jean and as can be seen, the tractor came in civil or military colouring. An added touch was the lifting bonnet (hood) which revealed a very basic engine for the farmer to work on! A selection of Hong Kong production with an old hay-turning rake-harrow and a tipping trailer. The little green one is the sort of thing that may have come with Kinder Eggs, not that I believe it did, it's small enough to have originated in a Christmas cracker? Behind is the Britains Lilliput Farm Tractor, with the nearly always missing driver, in front of which is the Hornby Dublo tractor, which never had a driver - as far as I know - being designed to be used as a load for rail flat-beds and low-loaders, or left parked around the marshalling yard! Finally a carded set of Hong Kong efforts, there is actually a piece missing from the bottom right, I suspect a trailer, and keep meaning to test fit my lose HK trailers to see if one fits. The yellow one above looks like a good candidate, but came with a completely different tractor, however such details mean nothing when dealing with HK output!

T is for TSR

Dungeons & Dragons, the first great 'system' for fantasy role-playing games, ultimately sort of lost out to Warhammer in Europe, but still holds it's own in the USA. And like their great rival - Games Workshop - the system supports a magazine, and various spin-offs. Also like GW they have from time to time produced a stand alone game to introduce new players/fans, of which this is one.

Strangely I've never seen one that didn't have the 6 extra figures or the 'limited edition' flash! It's a lot of box for not much content, this is due to the fact that there are a load card flats included and once they're made-up, storage becomes a problem.

Both sets of character figures, the metal set being provided by Ral Partha, who ironically have also worked with Games Workshop. Some of the figurines are straight copies of the plastic version, some are quite different, also there is a size differential between the two sets.

Sample of some of the hundred or so card stand-ups also included in the set. I think it's a 'live' side and a dead (but undead) or invisible (?) side.

S is for S'mother Stuff!

This is last post today and is to clear a couple of little companies, who's contributions to the small scale world have been on the minor side...

Soma was/is a trade Mark for a Chinese (Probably based in Hong Kong) company making/marketing carded pocket-money or rack toys. They produced two sets of aircraft and space vessels, each of which came with a pair of 'pilots', there were 12 poses in all, they wear a mixture of WWI, WWII, futuristic, SCUBA, fire-fighting and law-enforcement equipment with or without motorcycle/ice-hockey/Africa Corps headgear!!! Oh, and at least one was a female!

Issued in grey plastic with the space-ships and green with the Fighters, they were touched up in colours which could only serve to enhance the awfulness of the aforementioned equipment! Now that Caesar have started doing proper small scale fantasy these will make excellent space troopers. Each was numbered under the base.

Spears were a company long since swallowed up by Parker/Waddingtons (now Hasbro), that produced a board game in the 1970's called Trek, with an assortment of pieces useful to the war gamer, boxes of supplies, several nice 25mm mules, 30mm plastic flats of hunters and a reasonable 1:87'ish willies jeep.

S is for Star Wars

Here are a few not so much rarities, as just unusual items from the Galoob stable, now fully taken over by Hasbro.

The first is a group of three Micro-machine sets issued to tie-in with the paperbacks of the same title, dealing with what the dedicated Star Wars fans call the 'Expanded Universe' that is the universe containing all the characters, and events from, mentioned in or referenced by ALL films, comics, books, animations, toys etc...ever.

They (the dedicated ones - Love Star Wars, hate what the geeks have done to it) have tied themselves in knots on more than one occasion, not least when the money-grabbing one (aka; George Lucas - Love Star Wars, hate what the originator has done with it) brings out a new film or cartoon ignoring something already 'established' the the 'EU'.

Each set contained three EU characters and the ship/vessel most closely associated with them, if I could brake-off learning Klingon long enough to give a stuff about this nonsense I'd further explain, but suffice to say that for a small scale collector, the only thing of interest is that you can get Iberian packaging variants with Gig or Ideal logos!

Here we have the original Galoob 'Action Fleet' Naboo fighter on the left and the Hasbro re-issue of a couple of years ago on the right, note how the re-issue has an enhanced paint finish, with 'weathering' flowing back from leading edges, gun ports and blind-spots and has a chunk of battle-damage. Similar changes were evident in the decoration of the other re-issues, such as the X-Wing, the only one where it caused a problem (in my jaundiced eyes) was the AT-AT walker, which was given a snow-splatter that made it stand out like a sore thumb next to the old ones.

It's one thing to have a couple of aged tatty fighters in a squadron of cleanies, but it's quite another to have a battalion of AT-AT's with the reasonable weathering of the originals, joined at the front by some that seem to have lost a fight in a paint factory with the marsh-mallow man!

These are late production Galoob/Kenner 'Action Fleet' figures as issued in Japan, where they are collectable premiums like Kinder, but often without the chocolate, although with some sort of edible addition. The sets are sold in card boxes and usually one is a secret issue not included on the card/publicity material. In the case of this set from the small capsules Tomy are increasingly selling over here, it would seem that only the seven figures (two; paired and three; large/with large equipment piece) were involved and all are on the card.

S is for Standard

Some of my favourite toy soldiers are the card flats I've picked up over the years, and these are some of the nicer ones. Standard Games and Publications first advertised these in the late 1970's/early '80's. There were three ranges; ACW, Norman invasion of Britain and Fantasy.

This is the whole range of ACW and one of the fantasy sheets, the other being F1 Dungeon Adventure. Also missing are the sheets of Normans and Saxons.

[If anyone has the missing sheets to spare in good condition I have most of the ACW as mint spares for a strait one-for-one swap]

Close-up of the Confederate cavalry sheet, note how the same poses are used for Union and Confederate with a change of paint and also for foot and dismounted cavalry figures with the foot officer reused for the Artillery Officer, in other words, the original artist only had to come up with a small range of poses, yet the finished article still works...

...as can be seen here, there are at least one of everything on the baseboards illustrated. Each sheet came with a base sheet which vaguely matches the bases of the figures.

Comparison between various other modern card flats, left to right; Horse rider from cut-out race game in Christmas edition of Country Life magazine a few years ago; Usborne Publishing medieval peasant from the cut-out and assemble castle; Standard Union standing firer; Steve Jackson Games Half-Orc, this series of cards was recently re-issued as a single spiral-bound book, so if you're taken with them - check Amazon; Finally one of the rarest figures in my whole collection, this is a cut-out and stick figure - in 28mm - of the 54mm Atlantic space series, taken from the collectors cards that were issued with late production Atlantic 54mm WWII figures. I stuck him to a sheet of heavier card before cutting him tight to the artwork, hence the wierd base!

S is for Starlux

The best known of the French producers, these are a few shots of 54mm civilian figures I took a while ago.

These are all factory painted, and were to go with model farm products, as per Britains here in the UK. Interestingly these were not issued in the smaller scales like other Starlux civil stuff.

Paint variations, the one front right, may be (and I stress 'May' be) from a higher priced 'Lux' range, the rest are 'Choc'; the budget range.

Some more poses, I don't collect 54mm (I stop at 50mm) although I think I soon will just to complete the picture as it were, vis-a-vis toy soldier collecting, but in the meantime; will post larger bits form time to time, if someone asks, or I like the items!

S is for S.E.G.O.M.

Societie d' Edition General d' Objets Moules. One of the more sought-after or mythical names in war-gaming circles, SEGOM were primarily a range of 54mm metal figures from France, at some point they experimented with plastics (these are an acetone based injection-moulded resin) possibly as an attempt to counter the products of MDM (who were having a lot of success getting their - factory painted - 40mm figures into hotel and airport departure lounge display cases), in the course of which they produced a very small range of 25mm Napoleonic subjects, for a limited period.

This is the gun, with it's bits, it is of course a French piece, and was moulded in a green plastic.

Here is the same piece after a damn fine paint-job, the guy who painted them has sadly passed away, and I'm afraid I don't know his name, but am glad his work will be seen by a wider audience.

The horse was moulded in two parts with a separate base, there were three poses and three colours, with the bases moulded in the same cream as the figures. Also seen are two of the saddle bag/packs which came separately on the sprue of some mounted figures.

[I have no white 101's but would swap for a dark chocolate one, if you happen to have a spare; eMail me]

By the same artist as the artillery group, showing well what could be achieved with this small range, the figures were (with the exception of a couple of firing foot figures) in non-combat poses and were meant to be for display. He has actually used halves from two different catalogued horses - as was intended - there being a possible 9 different combinations.

Some of the cavalry as issued, note the Lancer on the left and Hussar on the right have their pack/saddle roll moulded onto their bum, but the Cuirassier/Dragoon types have the separate piece attached to the sprue.

S is for S.A.E.

Swedish African Engineers, the final (I think/hope??!!) incarnation of the work of Holgar Ericsson, a man who's style was his saving, as some of his execution was pretty poor, but the sculptural 'life' with which he imbues his figures more than make up for the lumpen state of some of them.

These are a set of Union infantry 'in camp' during the American civil was and are a large 25mm size. He also worked in most other sizes from 18mm through to 40mm Flat and Semi-flat figures. I think this is a full set, and I have a few identical figures in Confederate paint-jobs, so clearly they could have either, a common occurrence with metal ACW across the board!

These are posted in part to help Clive Smithers over at The Old Metal Detector Blog decide whether one of his 'unknowns' is SAE or not;

http://theoldmetaldetector.blogspot.com/search/label/unknown%20manufacturer

When I first saw the figure I thought it probably was, then while taking these photo's I decided it was of better sculpting, now I'm not so sure?

Also by HE (the mark often found on the upper surface of his figures) are these Highlanders of the 1880-1930 period, this is a 'standard' SAE set, presented like old hollow-cast toy soldiers...i.e. a handful of 'standing do'in not much' and an officer!

This is a bit of a mock-up of what they look like in the box, the box needs some work, but I will do it as a restoration project one day and post the pictures here. I will also - at some point - look at some of his other work.