Rafael Lipkin below, the ACW Artillery have been cleaned-up and added-to over on the Airfix blog, Berlin Wall on 'Other Collectables' and a whinge over at PPE Rant, which will be renamed soon!
So a fair bit today and more next week hopefully, but not until after Thursday, when all sorts might come out of the woodwork!
About Me
- Hugh Walter
- No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
- I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.
Friday, August 26, 2011
M ist fur die Maur
It is 50 years since the wall went up, and as there are kids in their 20's who see it as an historic event of the likes of the Titanic or a World War, I get to feel very old!
I was there...and I'm still here, so it was yesterday for me, and gives one a sense of what it must have been like for veterans of earlier historic events, trying to explain to the next generation that it was real. Ever wondered as a kid why the old guy at the end of the street or village always got a bit shirty with you as you played 'war'...
One of the first things any troops did when starting an operational tour of Berlin was have a coached orientation-tour, which basically meant having a tourist-bus ride with a man from the Intelligence Corps shouting stuff to the back of an army white-bus.
While we were being shown the sites round the Brandenburg gate area, I managed - with my old Kodak 33 Instamatic (which I'd been bought for my first visit to Germany, a touring holiday in 1969) - to shoot a Soxmis or Stasi spy-type person in a red Volvo photographing me! [us]. They would then compare these photographs with any movement documents they'd copied from the convoys and military train that ran 'down the zone' to West Germany, along with any passport photographs, to build-up a picture of the new units as they moved in.
I think this was shot as we went round the Victory Column, which celebrates someone other than the British giving the French a good spanking!!!! They love it really...bend over and bite your baguette Frenchie!
Years later I'd have one of these red Volvo's (a 940) with a bit of chrome round the windows! The East German's also had a fleet of 6-door 'stretched' Volvo estates in a pumpkin purple/midnight blue, which were parked outside the town hall in East Berlin, I never understood why one of our Allies would be selling fleets of specially prepared cars to the 'Enemy', then I saw some documentary which tied the subsidiary of the subsidiary of a global drinks company to part ownership of a 'peoples' ball-bearing factory somewhere in the East, making parts for T62's and realised that the world is merely mad, and it's rulers madder still; madder than the rest of us that's for sure.
One of my most treasured possessions, this is a real bit of the 'Wall' chipped-out near the Brandenburg Gate in the early hours of the day it came down by my ex-Girlfriend who was a West Berliner (and not a doughnut like Kennedy) and which she then sent to me. My brother happened to have this piece of hex-bar left over from making hand-tools as an apprentice a few years before, and I can't remember if I found the steel block or if he did, but he drilled it and jammed the bar in.
I was there...and I'm still here, so it was yesterday for me, and gives one a sense of what it must have been like for veterans of earlier historic events, trying to explain to the next generation that it was real. Ever wondered as a kid why the old guy at the end of the street or village always got a bit shirty with you as you played 'war'...
One of the first things any troops did when starting an operational tour of Berlin was have a coached orientation-tour, which basically meant having a tourist-bus ride with a man from the Intelligence Corps shouting stuff to the back of an army white-bus.While we were being shown the sites round the Brandenburg gate area, I managed - with my old Kodak 33 Instamatic (which I'd been bought for my first visit to Germany, a touring holiday in 1969) - to shoot a Soxmis or Stasi spy-type person in a red Volvo photographing me! [us]. They would then compare these photographs with any movement documents they'd copied from the convoys and military train that ran 'down the zone' to West Germany, along with any passport photographs, to build-up a picture of the new units as they moved in.
I think this was shot as we went round the Victory Column, which celebrates someone other than the British giving the French a good spanking!!!! They love it really...bend over and bite your baguette Frenchie!
Years later I'd have one of these red Volvo's (a 940) with a bit of chrome round the windows! The East German's also had a fleet of 6-door 'stretched' Volvo estates in a pumpkin purple/midnight blue, which were parked outside the town hall in East Berlin, I never understood why one of our Allies would be selling fleets of specially prepared cars to the 'Enemy', then I saw some documentary which tied the subsidiary of the subsidiary of a global drinks company to part ownership of a 'peoples' ball-bearing factory somewhere in the East, making parts for T62's and realised that the world is merely mad, and it's rulers madder still; madder than the rest of us that's for sure.
One of my most treasured possessions, this is a real bit of the 'Wall' chipped-out near the Brandenburg Gate in the early hours of the day it came down by my ex-Girlfriend who was a West Berliner (and not a doughnut like Kennedy) and which she then sent to me. My brother happened to have this piece of hex-bar left over from making hand-tools as an apprentice a few years before, and I can't remember if I found the steel block or if he did, but he drilled it and jammed the bar in.The East German concrete set like metal so I couldn't drill it, or not without destroying the whole thing, so I propped it all on its side, super-glued the bar to the lump and then fully-married them with a wadge of Araldite!!If you have a piece of 'the wall' smaller than a finger-nail, in a little plastic box from one of the traders down at the Zoo or Ku'damm, with a thin layer of florescent orange or pink paint; I'm afraid you have a fragment of the scammers equivalent of toffee-crackle, probably broken up with a toffee hammer as they make it so thin!!
Genuine pieces of the 'Wall' have a many-layered 'plastic' coating, created by the endless re-painting and over painting of the artists, graffitists and (occasionally) East German boarder-guards, who would come over via ladders and paint sections out at night - until their bosses worked-out that they got more 'runners' among the guards than any corresponding 'worth' of some whitewashing of stuff their own people couldn't read anyway! [They supposedly had the meter 'our' side of the wall, and did grab the odd person, by leaning down from the same ladders, or so it was told??]
I think these were taken in the Summer of 1987, and this one is a favourite of mine, it also appears in some of the better books on Wall Art. Years ago I painted this on the back of a leather Jacket for some guy, I wonder if he's still got it?
Taken over the wall from one of the wooden viewing platforms, and looking at one of the 'killing zones'. Sandwiched between both 'our' Wall and an inner security wall (over to the right) is a tarmacked road for the vehicles used to change and feed the guards, patrol the barrier etc...the sand strip which is a minefield and then a clear area of grass covered by firing ports in the tower in the background.
I think this is part of the area cleared to allow Roger Waters to perform 'The Wall' in 1991 (? I was there so I should know!), a superb event spoiled only by the helicopter lent by the AAC flight down at RAF Gatow (the garrison hung around for a few years after unification) who flew in to do the "You! Yes YOU - Laddie, Stand Still Will YER!" bit, and then decided to hang around for most of the next number having a gander and drowning everything out until one of the lighting guys encouraged them to leave with a white-spotlight!!
Another favourite, if you find this one in a book it's usually missing the anarchist epithet! I have another book on the wall somewhere which is a combination of actual art and the results of a competition which included lots of these 'release' or 'through the key-hole' motifs.
A bit of a story, the long version I may tell one day...me and a chap called Maiden were a gun-team (GPMG) on a live-firing exercise in Sennelager 'up (or 'down') the zone', when we were accidentally shot at by our Platoon Commander! Nice chap, fresh out of Sandhurst and trying too hard! Anyway, being a 'Rodney' he got the weirdest punishment while he waited his real punishment...he was sent from the battalion up to Brigade (in the old '36 Olympic Village) and put in charge of a REME team building a scale model of the British sector of the Wall.
Knowing I had trained as a graphic designer in civi-street, and knowing I wasn't too bothered about the fact he's loosed-off a 7.62 full metal jacket in my general direction, he came and asked me if I could produce some drawings for the guy's to work from, which I duly did.
Being given - then - classified photographs (which any tourist could get with the right lens!), I took copies of the finished drawings before I handed them it. I don't know if the model was ever made, and if it was whether it survived the fall of the Wall and withdrawal of Berlin brigade? It may be in one of the Wall/German Division/Reunification museums, of which there are several in Berlin these days.
I actually got the dimensions of the later-style 'lollipop' tower wrong in my haste, making it oblong when it did in fact have a square floor-plan! I have visions of all the towers on this 18-meter model being wrong and can only hope some bright-spark in the REME spotted the 'grunts' cock-up...
Me photographing them photographing me again! I'm the shadow bottom right, and they are 'photo-guy', left, by the hut and 'I guard he guards I guy' next to him. I wonder if they are still out there somewhere...now 'just' Germans living normal lives like the rest of us?
This was shot down in the 'hippy'/alternative/goth/punk squatter area near Krautzfeld, and one suspects that the lorry is backed right up to the wall for a purpose. As can be seen, there is a maze of 'Wall', 'Wire' and various blockages as road, rail and internal border all meet badly up against one of the canals. I wonder if there wasn't a bit of late-night 'traffic' here than ignored both boarders and politics!
For every inch of the famous 'Wall' there was 10 kilometers of the less famous 'Wire', running along-side the main arterial road and rail links with West Germany, down the middle between the two Germany's' and round the outside of West Berlin.
From time to time we'd get the BMT (British Military Train) 'Down the Zone' and these two shots were taken covertly from the window. A sealed station somewhere between Magdeburg (a big grey soviet industrial town with a Tank Barracks right-up against the railway-line) and Braunsweig, where we re-entered the West.
I think there is an almost discernible 'ghost' of Taff Davis in the window sitting opposite me...
You have to wonder why the current government of the State of Israel are busy building walls, when they always fail...
Jericho, Troy, Mahenjo Daro, Siegfried, Maginot, Hadrian's, Bar Lev, Berlin, French Indo-China even the Great wall of China is in pieces and saw the Mongol hoards swarm across it. The night I got home to see it coming down, I shed a tear, I'm not ashamed to say, not because I was sad to see it go, but because it represented waste, wasted lives, wasted time and wasted money - foisted on all of us by those who would rule over us.
They were - in the mid-1990's - talking about giving us a medal, us 'Cold-war Warriors', or a Berlin bar to the GSM (we were written off the combat-ready strength of NATO due to our 10 minute survivability status if the 'balloon went up' - 99 red one's, who remembers that...and better heard in the original German, thanks Nena!), but then Phony Tony B.Liar took us to war in three new places and our young successors started really dying, while we just thought about it occasionally in the Irish Pub in the Europa Centre. So we - rightly - stop asking for a medal and go back to our memories and a little piece of concrete 'History' on stick!
R is for Raphael Lipkin Ltd.
This post is due in no small part to the Littlewoods catalogue page that Bill 'Wotan' posted the other day over on the 'Moonbase' (link to left). One of my favorite vehicles of all time top ten favourite vehicles 'Mate', messieurs's Backman, Turner and the Mighty Antar Overdrive!...did I say I do a lot of greeate work for cheearitee?...!
Three shots of the Raphael Lipkin Mighty Antar Tank Transporter with both it's own load; a Conqueror, and the Jimson copy of the Airfix 'Attack Force' Patton Tank I fell for at the PW show two years ago (where does the time go!).
Raphael Lipkin were a small London based company that produced a lot of the toys recognisable to people of a certain age...namely; people like me...oh, 47 all right!! But they didn't always mark them, or the packaging, so they go quite unsung, I know a guy who collects them as a speciality/side-bar to a wider collection of early British plastic, and while I've never seen his collection, I did see what he sold as swaps a few years ago and Lipkin featured.
If they are marked it's a little stick-man logo that spells RLL, but looks like it's trying to say LRL
The catalogue page courtesy of Moonbase's 'Wotan' Bill, along with the Hong Kong 'No.975 Armoured Car Friction Powered' which looks like Telsalda or Lucky but is in an unmarked box, showing the trailer stand/legs. Also the Tractor unit being used as a recovery platform.
The tank is polystyrene while the truck is polyethylene, the colour match being down to the use of neutral granules of each material with the same staining compound.
We used to make - here in the UK - toys that were worth exporting all over the world, toys that were worth every penny they cost and toys that kept people like me happy for a whole rainy August (apart from the odd fight with my brother! - some things never change), now they get bored with the three-billion things their iPod can do and torch the local High Street instead!
The value built into this is pretty 'special'...a four-piece tool set and winch handle, stored in lockers with secure doors. Working ramps and support-legs on the trailer, it's quality man!
Another excuse to check out the Triang Conqueror and also a look at the Airfix Antar with the sand version of the Patton Tank.
Three shots of the Raphael Lipkin Mighty Antar Tank Transporter with both it's own load; a Conqueror, and the Jimson copy of the Airfix 'Attack Force' Patton Tank I fell for at the PW show two years ago (where does the time go!).Raphael Lipkin were a small London based company that produced a lot of the toys recognisable to people of a certain age...namely; people like me...oh, 47 all right!! But they didn't always mark them, or the packaging, so they go quite unsung, I know a guy who collects them as a speciality/side-bar to a wider collection of early British plastic, and while I've never seen his collection, I did see what he sold as swaps a few years ago and Lipkin featured.
If they are marked it's a little stick-man logo that spells RLL, but looks like it's trying to say LRL
The catalogue page courtesy of Moonbase's 'Wotan' Bill, along with the Hong Kong 'No.975 Armoured Car Friction Powered' which looks like Telsalda or Lucky but is in an unmarked box, showing the trailer stand/legs. Also the Tractor unit being used as a recovery platform.The tank is polystyrene while the truck is polyethylene, the colour match being down to the use of neutral granules of each material with the same staining compound.
We used to make - here in the UK - toys that were worth exporting all over the world, toys that were worth every penny they cost and toys that kept people like me happy for a whole rainy August (apart from the odd fight with my brother! - some things never change), now they get bored with the three-billion things their iPod can do and torch the local High Street instead!The value built into this is pretty 'special'...a four-piece tool set and winch handle, stored in lockers with secure doors. Working ramps and support-legs on the trailer, it's quality man!
Another excuse to check out the Triang Conqueror and also a look at the Airfix Antar with the sand version of the Patton Tank.
Enviromental Health - They think not!
A friend of mine had been having a bit of bother with his Employer/Landlord (?) and turned (as you might imagine we all would)...to the local authority who have a statutory duty in these matters. Only it turned out they don't really, in fact as long as we keep paying them their salaries, they'll do as little as they can
This is what his bedroom looks like, and has done for some time, he brought it to the attention of the home-owners solicitors some 5 months ago, but it still looks like this and he still sleeps on the Sofa.
This is what his bedroom looks like, and has done for some time, he brought it to the attention of the home-owners solicitors some 5 months ago, but it still looks like this and he still sleeps on the Sofa.So he got in touch with the council and was told someone would get back to him on Monday, FOUR weeks latter he got a letter telling him they were assuming everything was OK and that if they didn't hear from him in a day or two they'd close the case. Furious phone-call later and he had an appointment for the middle of the next week, where he was told someone from 'eevee' would ring him the next week.
Someone did on the Monday, she said she'd get back to him by the middle of the week. She didn't! Sometime on the Friday (in office hours) he rang to find out what was happening, only to get the 'We've all gone-off for the weekend, try again Monday' message, he left a message alright, it produced a phone-call first thing the following Monday with an assurance that they would ring him by Wednesday...
...without the promised call he got this from Sue on the Thursday. Has she earned her money, do you think? Perhaps if we sack a few of these useless jobsworths we could keep a few mobile Library's going, so vulnerable people in outlying areas can get help finding books that might tell them how to get stuff done when the people tasked with doing so by legislation fail to.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
J is for Just a quick one!
The library have updated their computers and I can now see my 'followers' for the first time since December, along with all the images on Paul's Bod's and Figabulary both of which have been closed to me for some time...still can't comment on a bunch of blogs though!
So welcome and thanks for linking/following, I will check-out all the new blogs, sort out links etc...soon but other crap keeps me away from all this still...although...Dum Dum DUM!...my total has barely changed, so a few people must have dropped-off the bottom, there's only a toy-free Hell below the bottom-rung chaps! You should have held on tighter, consider what you're missing; a gobby Aspergers retard who thinks he knows a bit about soldiers...what else could anyone want?
I see we're not far-off the magic 100,000 views so having missed the fifty, same rules as the 30,000; First to send me a screenshot of their being the viewer on the page with 100,000 will get something nice, but I don't know what yet...or when (and the event itself is weeks away still), possibly a mint Airfix first version ACW Artillery set boxed on sprue? Or a handful of Speedwell Germans for a large scale collector? (scroll to the bottom of the page and if it says 100000, hit Ctrl/Prtscn, together and save on prompt to where you want - desktop etc...or you can open a word doc. or pub. and paste).
Thanks to Philotoadia for sending me a lovely rubber Dalek, and to a German guy who has sent me some Bubble-gum premium stuff to publish here (which I will do hopefully in three or four weeks), can he check his email and get back to me, I need to know who to credit!
Also I haven't forgotten Pam the cellulose Lady in Wales (I have some animals for you), and Ken - your Ist version Airfix Attack Force tanks are still there with your name on them (I carved it in with a hot knife...hey; they're OLD, I didn't think you'd mind!!!!!) (wink-ani)
About two weeks ago there was a fascinating article over on the Moonbase with the Rafael Lipkin Conqueror and Transporter on an old Littlewood's catalogue page, along with what I assume were two other RLL friction-motor trucks, supplied with Lone*Star crewmen...worth checking out over there.
Premiums in a week or so, Berlin Wall stuff over at other collectable in - hopefully - a few days, and lots of opinion after 2 September! Lots...Burning city's, jailed scrotes, usless politicians, tax-evasion and venal millionaires to name but a few subjects in my sights...oh yeah...and I've been officially declared a retarded genius (very liberating - I can report)!
So welcome and thanks for linking/following, I will check-out all the new blogs, sort out links etc...soon but other crap keeps me away from all this still...although...Dum Dum DUM!...my total has barely changed, so a few people must have dropped-off the bottom, there's only a toy-free Hell below the bottom-rung chaps! You should have held on tighter, consider what you're missing; a gobby Aspergers retard who thinks he knows a bit about soldiers...what else could anyone want?
I see we're not far-off the magic 100,000 views so having missed the fifty, same rules as the 30,000; First to send me a screenshot of their being the viewer on the page with 100,000 will get something nice, but I don't know what yet...or when (and the event itself is weeks away still), possibly a mint Airfix first version ACW Artillery set boxed on sprue? Or a handful of Speedwell Germans for a large scale collector? (scroll to the bottom of the page and if it says 100000, hit Ctrl/Prtscn, together and save on prompt to where you want - desktop etc...or you can open a word doc. or pub. and paste).
Thanks to Philotoadia for sending me a lovely rubber Dalek, and to a German guy who has sent me some Bubble-gum premium stuff to publish here (which I will do hopefully in three or four weeks), can he check his email and get back to me, I need to know who to credit!
Also I haven't forgotten Pam the cellulose Lady in Wales (I have some animals for you), and Ken - your Ist version Airfix Attack Force tanks are still there with your name on them (I carved it in with a hot knife...hey; they're OLD, I didn't think you'd mind!!!!!) (wink-ani)
About two weeks ago there was a fascinating article over on the Moonbase with the Rafael Lipkin Conqueror and Transporter on an old Littlewood's catalogue page, along with what I assume were two other RLL friction-motor trucks, supplied with Lone*Star crewmen...worth checking out over there.
Premiums in a week or so, Berlin Wall stuff over at other collectable in - hopefully - a few days, and lots of opinion after 2 September! Lots...Burning city's, jailed scrotes, usless politicians, tax-evasion and venal millionaires to name but a few subjects in my sights...oh yeah...and I've been officially declared a retarded genius (very liberating - I can report)!
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
News
More new stuff over on the Airfix blog, well it's mostly very old stuff now! Box art for Zoo and Combat Group, 54mm Para's and Germans and all the WW1 are now 'live' with 30-odd images added, I will post something here but not for a week or two, too much on!
Friday, July 1, 2011
News, views etc...
Just posted the HO/OO WWI Americans over on the Airfix Blog, and had a bit of a rant at the same time!
New Plastic Warrior is out, can't do the usual review as I need to be online at home to 'get it right', but some facinating stuff, especially if you are a civilian or Hill/Johillco/Hilco fan.
But you're all subscribing by now aren't you!
New Plastic Warrior is out, can't do the usual review as I need to be online at home to 'get it right', but some facinating stuff, especially if you are a civilian or Hill/Johillco/Hilco fan.
But you're all subscribing by now aren't you!
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
S is for Spyglass Miniatures
Currently in 'The Works' (same place that did the clip-together tanks a while back), you local discount book shop, are these female Elfish (?) warriors at 99p.
The guy has an up-to-date blog (spyglassasylum.blogspot.com) but I can't find her there nor on the website (www.spyglassminiatures.com) so guess she's some sort of old stock clearance or a retail experiment?
Very good quality sculpt and finish, get 'em before they're all gone!
The guy has an up-to-date blog (spyglassasylum.blogspot.com) but I can't find her there nor on the website (www.spyglassminiatures.com) so guess she's some sort of old stock clearance or a retail experiment?
Very good quality sculpt and finish, get 'em before they're all gone!
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
V is for ‘Vyper’…or; it was!
For reasons beyond my control which I will digress in the fullness of time, I’ve been rather kicking my heels for a while now and in a moment of supreme boredom this weekend I took out an old kit by ‘mine nemesis’ the GW franchise. A kit I bought some time ago and almost immediately regretted as it cost about as much as three Esci/Airfix AFV kits and contained almost nothing, surrounded by a lot of runner ('sprue')!
Turning the bits over in my mitts I was struck by two things, firstly there’s nothing there to power it! Some cooling vanes (?) under the seat and four straight-through engine tubes/venturi, but nothing substantially capable of calling itself a power system or motive force, call me a pedant, but I like my sci-fi grounded in the laws of physics!
Bringing me to the second obviously pointless design element; a guy mounted behind the pilot waving a ten-foot off-centre weapon [presumably] of some weight. Now I’m guessing most of the visitors to this blog haven’t been called upon to carry a .50 Cal Browning, but if you had, you’d know it’s about half the size/bulk of the weapons in this kit, and takes two men to carry a few yards!
In other words, this tiny vehicle would be almost impossible to fly and totally incapable of hitting a barn door in a straight dive, as it is supposed to be built (and woe betide anyone turning up at the local store’s evening game with the wrong configuration!), even if it had ‘magic’ thought-fed power-systems and a complete BAE Systems/Segway self-righting/levelling suite! – Oh how modern technology is dating some sci-fi faster than it can be re-written…give the crew of the Starship Enterprise some iPads and a Kindle – for god’s sake!
Deciding on a colour scheme before I’d got the glue out, I then rather tore into the ‘project’. There were - on the weapons sprue - two pieces of cowling or bodywork, which were of no consequence, so presumably it was designed for other kits or taken from another kit? Something which should bring the price down, not leave it three times the cost of a similar kit elsewhere!
Anyway; this allowed me - with a short piece of cocktail stick – to dispense with the stupid gunner-cradle and turn my ‘Vyper’ into the patented Waltii Industries TC Gunship (© Waltii Industries* 2830NS) you see developing before you with – if I say so myself – some high degree of accuracy, it being (as I’m sure you’ve already noted); the Mk. IIIB model much favored in the rim-worlds!
The cradle (© GW 1996), now looked remarkably like the anti-gravity ‘Speeder-bike’ of Darth Maul in the film - Star Wars I of IV ‘A Franchise is Reborn’ (© Lucasfilms 1994?), not that GW would copy other people would they, I mean; it’s not like the new ‘Prince Apophas’ (© GW 2010?) from Citadel Finecast is a straight lift from the living Scarab-pillar in the comic ‘The Exterminators’ (© Vertigo 2006?)…is it? So I decided to make it up as just that, a light, floating ‘wing-man’ with a heavy punch. The thing is; they then both ‘looked’ better than the GW ‘whole’.
I went with a ‘panzer-farb’ ambush scheme on desert pink for the speeder, and field-grey for the pilots, (they haven’t been issued their tropische uniforms yet!) although I allowed them a brighter green for their web equipment, belts and helmets. I used the sight/power-source from one of the other weapons in the box to balance the great big whatever (interplanetary ray-blaster? It could be an underwater riveter for all I know – or care!), that he now gets to wave about like a banker's sports car (you know what I mean!) without poking it in the TC Gunship pilot’s ear!
Those who have followed this blog for a while will by now have realised that the cynic in me won’t allow myself to take this stuff remotely seriously!
The TC Gunship ready to roll, or wobble like a Segway with a newbie! Keeping the WWII theme going I went with the contrasting double-outlined boundaries seen on some of the early M4 Sherman's in the Western Desert and tried to make the ammo-feed belt look like the slightly-green tinted, gold anodized links you get on the 30mm rounds for automatic cannon or belt-fed grenade launchers.
I didn’t paint all the little blobs like jewel’s, that’s just too GW for me! They’re only fairing for little bits of under-skin equipment, sensors and the like! One of the weird things about the GW universe is that people think a unit in electric blue with florescent pink vehicles covered in lights & jewels and flying 18-foot banners can ever have the element of surprise or creep-up on anything!
The ‘Speeder bike’ given the same 4-view treatment, of course it’s not a Speeder-bike, which would create issues with Mr. Lucas who’s as happy to sue as Carter Ruck! If the other platform is a ‘Gunship’, this must be a Cannon-canoe, yeah, of course it is -it’s a Nebillian Boat-works* PS Mk12! How silly of me not to mention that earlier…
Note to self - don’t play rugby with Eldar (©, TM, (R) etc...), those pointy-heads are going to do your chances of future progeny no favours!
The two together, waiting for the ‘Off’, if I had to do this again, I’d bin the bloody PVA’s and use enamel, it was like working with wet sand, I don’t know if it’s the weather, or just age, but my Humbrol is starting to get as granular as the old Airfix matt enamels used to be? Try copying the third image to your desktop and then enlarge by 50% you’ll see what I mean; great lumps and streaks of paint! I also rushed it, and would take more time next time. I didn’t think about markings, and now they’re ‘finished’ I doubt I’ll go back to them.
Also the canopy spars are too clean, but to try and weather them down to the same state as the rest of the vehicle would have risked mucking it up even more, so I guess the ground crews have kept the spars clean as they polish the Plexiglas…but why - in the year 2830NS - have they gone back to multi-panel canopies? Even we’ve evolved beyond that and we’ve retired Concord and the Shuttle! The ‘heads-up’ canopy display was just OHP pens, while other controls were marker pen on white paint.
I’d also fill the gap behind the seat and under the gun with stuff from the spares box, in order to have something looking like a propulsion system, roughly where you’d expect one!
But…they look OK for what was less than a day’s work, and apart from a piece of toothpick and an old hex-base; they used nothing from the spares box, and gave me two vehicles for the price of one, something to consider if you do play the GW way? I was going to give them both some old GW dogs heads I have somewhere, but the need to end the exercise was greater than the desire to go digging in the spares!
* Sole proprietor of Waltii Industries and the Nebillian Boat-works; H. Walter Esq.
Turning the bits over in my mitts I was struck by two things, firstly there’s nothing there to power it! Some cooling vanes (?) under the seat and four straight-through engine tubes/venturi, but nothing substantially capable of calling itself a power system or motive force, call me a pedant, but I like my sci-fi grounded in the laws of physics!
Bringing me to the second obviously pointless design element; a guy mounted behind the pilot waving a ten-foot off-centre weapon [presumably] of some weight. Now I’m guessing most of the visitors to this blog haven’t been called upon to carry a .50 Cal Browning, but if you had, you’d know it’s about half the size/bulk of the weapons in this kit, and takes two men to carry a few yards!
In other words, this tiny vehicle would be almost impossible to fly and totally incapable of hitting a barn door in a straight dive, as it is supposed to be built (and woe betide anyone turning up at the local store’s evening game with the wrong configuration!), even if it had ‘magic’ thought-fed power-systems and a complete BAE Systems/Segway self-righting/levelling suite! – Oh how modern technology is dating some sci-fi faster than it can be re-written…give the crew of the Starship Enterprise some iPads and a Kindle – for god’s sake!
Deciding on a colour scheme before I’d got the glue out, I then rather tore into the ‘project’. There were - on the weapons sprue - two pieces of cowling or bodywork, which were of no consequence, so presumably it was designed for other kits or taken from another kit? Something which should bring the price down, not leave it three times the cost of a similar kit elsewhere!Anyway; this allowed me - with a short piece of cocktail stick – to dispense with the stupid gunner-cradle and turn my ‘Vyper’ into the patented Waltii Industries TC Gunship (© Waltii Industries* 2830NS) you see developing before you with – if I say so myself – some high degree of accuracy, it being (as I’m sure you’ve already noted); the Mk. IIIB model much favored in the rim-worlds!
The cradle (© GW 1996), now looked remarkably like the anti-gravity ‘Speeder-bike’ of Darth Maul in the film - Star Wars I of IV ‘A Franchise is Reborn’ (© Lucasfilms 1994?), not that GW would copy other people would they, I mean; it’s not like the new ‘Prince Apophas’ (© GW 2010?) from Citadel Finecast is a straight lift from the living Scarab-pillar in the comic ‘The Exterminators’ (© Vertigo 2006?)…is it? So I decided to make it up as just that, a light, floating ‘wing-man’ with a heavy punch. The thing is; they then both ‘looked’ better than the GW ‘whole’.
I went with a ‘panzer-farb’ ambush scheme on desert pink for the speeder, and field-grey for the pilots, (they haven’t been issued their tropische uniforms yet!) although I allowed them a brighter green for their web equipment, belts and helmets. I used the sight/power-source from one of the other weapons in the box to balance the great big whatever (interplanetary ray-blaster? It could be an underwater riveter for all I know – or care!), that he now gets to wave about like a banker's sports car (you know what I mean!) without poking it in the TC Gunship pilot’s ear!Those who have followed this blog for a while will by now have realised that the cynic in me won’t allow myself to take this stuff remotely seriously!
The TC Gunship ready to roll, or wobble like a Segway with a newbie! Keeping the WWII theme going I went with the contrasting double-outlined boundaries seen on some of the early M4 Sherman's in the Western Desert and tried to make the ammo-feed belt look like the slightly-green tinted, gold anodized links you get on the 30mm rounds for automatic cannon or belt-fed grenade launchers.I didn’t paint all the little blobs like jewel’s, that’s just too GW for me! They’re only fairing for little bits of under-skin equipment, sensors and the like! One of the weird things about the GW universe is that people think a unit in electric blue with florescent pink vehicles covered in lights & jewels and flying 18-foot banners can ever have the element of surprise or creep-up on anything!
The ‘Speeder bike’ given the same 4-view treatment, of course it’s not a Speeder-bike, which would create issues with Mr. Lucas who’s as happy to sue as Carter Ruck! If the other platform is a ‘Gunship’, this must be a Cannon-canoe, yeah, of course it is -it’s a Nebillian Boat-works* PS Mk12! How silly of me not to mention that earlier…Note to self - don’t play rugby with Eldar (©, TM, (R) etc...), those pointy-heads are going to do your chances of future progeny no favours!
The two together, waiting for the ‘Off’, if I had to do this again, I’d bin the bloody PVA’s and use enamel, it was like working with wet sand, I don’t know if it’s the weather, or just age, but my Humbrol is starting to get as granular as the old Airfix matt enamels used to be? Try copying the third image to your desktop and then enlarge by 50% you’ll see what I mean; great lumps and streaks of paint! I also rushed it, and would take more time next time. I didn’t think about markings, and now they’re ‘finished’ I doubt I’ll go back to them.Also the canopy spars are too clean, but to try and weather them down to the same state as the rest of the vehicle would have risked mucking it up even more, so I guess the ground crews have kept the spars clean as they polish the Plexiglas…but why - in the year 2830NS - have they gone back to multi-panel canopies? Even we’ve evolved beyond that and we’ve retired Concord and the Shuttle! The ‘heads-up’ canopy display was just OHP pens, while other controls were marker pen on white paint.
I’d also fill the gap behind the seat and under the gun with stuff from the spares box, in order to have something looking like a propulsion system, roughly where you’d expect one!
But…they look OK for what was less than a day’s work, and apart from a piece of toothpick and an old hex-base; they used nothing from the spares box, and gave me two vehicles for the price of one, something to consider if you do play the GW way? I was going to give them both some old GW dogs heads I have somewhere, but the need to end the exercise was greater than the desire to go digging in the spares!
* Sole proprietor of Waltii Industries and the Nebillian Boat-works; H. Walter Esq.
Monday, June 13, 2011
N is for New Posts
Just one today, another ACW set, have also updated the images for the introductory post to the previous group of related stuff.
L is for Lone*Star
After all that very small scale stuff the other day, here’s a bit of 54mm from the Autumn purchase of last year, and continues the ‘theme du jour’; that occasion - one hundred and fifty years ago - when two halves of a Nation only 90-odd years old itself, decided to have a little discussion about the doctrines of Nationhood, Citizenship, tax and er…slavery…“Yeah! Let’s wrap it all up in ‘Slavery’!”
The only Union figure I have happens to be the only pose I don’t have in Confederate garb (the two sets were the same 8 poses, in either grey or navy blue plastic), while the officer is a repaint on a confederate-grey figure.
The next two have been converted to high-boots with filler, a knife and paint, while the last figure is actually a Lone*Star Foreign Legionnaire, a set whose poses mirror the ACW.
Inset are examples of the helmeted and bereted Infantry to show how L*S liked to stick with favoured poses across the whole range.
This is my rather pathetic sample of Lone*Star ACW figures, well; I have only been collecting larger scales for a couple of years, and money’s been tight!
Four Confederates in reasonable condition, paint on the trousers of the first one will lead to an update sometime, but as it’s a different shade, it stays for now. Inset is a 60mm figure from Crescent to show how these two companies went with a very similar paint scheme.
Might I also suggest that the sculptor (Erik or Revere/Riviere?) used a Britains ‘Swoppet’ Cowboy head as part of his master sculpt for the running-waving-hat figure? He is far more detailed than the other faces, and looks vaguely familiar.
The only Union figure I have happens to be the only pose I don’t have in Confederate garb (the two sets were the same 8 poses, in either grey or navy blue plastic), while the officer is a repaint on a confederate-grey figure.The next two have been converted to high-boots with filler, a knife and paint, while the last figure is actually a Lone*Star Foreign Legionnaire, a set whose poses mirror the ACW.
Inset are examples of the helmeted and bereted Infantry to show how L*S liked to stick with favoured poses across the whole range.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
I is for Initial Introduction
Below these three shots - If I get them all loaded today; are 7 other articles, which this picture will help with, as far as identifying the various figures goes and judging the sizes against each other.
Soldiers, pilots and civilians/rail passengers, the relevant rail staff are dealt with in a couple of the posts below somewhere and the entire range of Hornby Dublo/Hornby/Hornby-Triang and Hornby Railways sets and issues will be covered in another post another time, as will a more in-depth look at the relationships - as I understand them - in the Modelmaster/Merit/Wills/
Slater’s/Peco/Guagemaster family of semi-flats from old die-cast moulds.
For some reason this is not enlarging when you click on it, probably too much coding on the image, I'll re-load all three seperately in a day or two, sorry for that, it's the one image in all 8 posts you want to open - peer hard!!!...Done!
Three years later (05th April 2014)...we'll try this;
That seems to have done the trick...click on it to enlarge them all to tha same relative size!
Soldiers, pilots and civilians/rail passengers, the relevant rail staff are dealt with in a couple of the posts below somewhere and the entire range of Hornby Dublo/Hornby/Hornby-Triang and Hornby Railways sets and issues will be covered in another post another time, as will a more in-depth look at the relationships - as I understand them - in the Modelmaster/Merit/Wills/Slater’s/Peco/Guagemaster family of semi-flats from old die-cast moulds.
For some reason this is not enlarging when you click on it, probably too much coding on the image, I'll re-load all three seperately in a day or two, sorry for that, it's the one image in all 8 posts you want to open - peer hard!!!...Done!
Three years later (05th April 2014)...we'll try this;
That seems to have done the trick...click on it to enlarge them all to tha same relative size!
T is for Tiny...Tiny Trojan's
The reason I ended up with 7 articles was that I wanted to cover the ‘Tiny Trojan’ figures, but to do that I needed to compare them to their Crescent originals, which lent toward further comparisons with Skybirds and Dinky and so on…
The Trojans are bigger than both Airfix and Britains ‘Trooscale’ who were aiming at a market which was quite dominated by the smaller European HO railway equipment, and the associated buildings, trees and so on that the war gaming fraternity were interested in campaigning their Airfix figures through!
They are however the same size as the small ranges of pre- and post-war figures by Skybirds, Crescent (1:72) and Dinky (nominally; 1:60), and it’s this early inability of the toy industry to standardize a size or range of sizes that leaves us collecting figures that climb in quarter-millimeter increments from less than 15mm to 70mm+
As can be seen in the picture at the bottom right, there were two distinct issues of these figures (Khaki below and a greyish brown – the more common – above), with further ‘collectable’ variants as well, such as the black or unpainted helmets of the former issue.
The Crescent figure with an asterisk seems not to have been issued by Trojan in plastic. The lack of a discernable size difference between the Crescent originals and the Tiny Trojans would suggest that Trojan inherited the moulds for the Crescent range, why they dropped one pose and created 3 new ones may never been known, a guess would be the level of damage to the moulds when Trojan got hold of them and/or a desire to fill gaps in the ‘Infantry section’ with an anti-tank weapon and a machine gun.
All the Trojans in this collage are from the set known to the hobby as set ‘B’ or set ‘2’ or ‘The second set’, as neither set is identified anywhere other than the catalogue list, there is no guarantee that this is the correct way round, apart for the fact that these poses seem currently less common than the other 4 poses and it seems reasonable to assume they were in production for a shorter time.
The additional poses (over the Crescent range) in this set are the Bazooka-man; here seemingly based on a pose common to a lot of Eriksson’s kneeling figures (posted the other day in an ACW article), which by the late 1950’s were everywhere in all sizes; and the flailing around/stabbing pose which was common to a lot of larger scale figure sets of the time such as Marx, MPC and so on, indeed it bears a striking resemblance to the stabbing 8th Army pose from Charbens.
Set 1/A/The first set; The extra pose here is the prone machine-gunner, clearly sculpted by an amateur, probably from someone else’s casualty (?), and I’ve shot three together to show that he is meant to look like that! His weapon seems to have been sculpted from the weapon on the deck of a common pocket-money/bath toy MTB of the time from Hong Kong, and is a scaled-down twin-Oerlikon (with shield) from the front deck of the said boat.
The other three poses are from the previous metal Crescent range. The fact that the gloss paint on the browner/khaki figures probably pre-dates the matt colours of the other batch, and the fact that the other 4 poses appear in both styles, would point to neither being more or less common that the other, and that larger numbers of ‘Set B’ are just ‘still to be found’; three shop-stock boxes of ‘Set A’ having turned up in the last 12 years - on both sides of the ‘Pond’.
Added 29/02/12 I've been waiting a while for this, now it's here - the 'shop stock' box; this is the second one to turn up in the States, and like the previous one contained only the four 'set A' poses, originally about 36 sets of them.
Purely by a process of elimination (which is by no means accurate), I have tentatively identified these (‘T?’) as being from the other two sets in the Trojan Catalogue; Passengers and Rail Staff. Both are taken from the Britains/W.Horton/Trix (‘B’) range of ‘Trooscale’/Lilliput figures.
Again, evidence - lack of size difference - points to Trojan (if it is them) getting hold of the moulds originally used for the metal ranges. The better detail on the plastic figures can be explained by the use of a different material in the mould, while the head/hat differences of the mother and daughter (Britains; No.LB/517 Nurse and Child) is easily explained as being due to flash rather than remoulding.
The Trojans are bigger than both Airfix and Britains ‘Trooscale’ who were aiming at a market which was quite dominated by the smaller European HO railway equipment, and the associated buildings, trees and so on that the war gaming fraternity were interested in campaigning their Airfix figures through!They are however the same size as the small ranges of pre- and post-war figures by Skybirds, Crescent (1:72) and Dinky (nominally; 1:60), and it’s this early inability of the toy industry to standardize a size or range of sizes that leaves us collecting figures that climb in quarter-millimeter increments from less than 15mm to 70mm+
As can be seen in the picture at the bottom right, there were two distinct issues of these figures (Khaki below and a greyish brown – the more common – above), with further ‘collectable’ variants as well, such as the black or unpainted helmets of the former issue.
The Crescent figure with an asterisk seems not to have been issued by Trojan in plastic. The lack of a discernable size difference between the Crescent originals and the Tiny Trojans would suggest that Trojan inherited the moulds for the Crescent range, why they dropped one pose and created 3 new ones may never been known, a guess would be the level of damage to the moulds when Trojan got hold of them and/or a desire to fill gaps in the ‘Infantry section’ with an anti-tank weapon and a machine gun.
All the Trojans in this collage are from the set known to the hobby as set ‘B’ or set ‘2’ or ‘The second set’, as neither set is identified anywhere other than the catalogue list, there is no guarantee that this is the correct way round, apart for the fact that these poses seem currently less common than the other 4 poses and it seems reasonable to assume they were in production for a shorter time.The additional poses (over the Crescent range) in this set are the Bazooka-man; here seemingly based on a pose common to a lot of Eriksson’s kneeling figures (posted the other day in an ACW article), which by the late 1950’s were everywhere in all sizes; and the flailing around/stabbing pose which was common to a lot of larger scale figure sets of the time such as Marx, MPC and so on, indeed it bears a striking resemblance to the stabbing 8th Army pose from Charbens.
Set 1/A/The first set; The extra pose here is the prone machine-gunner, clearly sculpted by an amateur, probably from someone else’s casualty (?), and I’ve shot three together to show that he is meant to look like that! His weapon seems to have been sculpted from the weapon on the deck of a common pocket-money/bath toy MTB of the time from Hong Kong, and is a scaled-down twin-Oerlikon (with shield) from the front deck of the said boat.The other three poses are from the previous metal Crescent range. The fact that the gloss paint on the browner/khaki figures probably pre-dates the matt colours of the other batch, and the fact that the other 4 poses appear in both styles, would point to neither being more or less common that the other, and that larger numbers of ‘Set B’ are just ‘still to be found’; three shop-stock boxes of ‘Set A’ having turned up in the last 12 years - on both sides of the ‘Pond’.
Added 29/02/12 I've been waiting a while for this, now it's here - the 'shop stock' box; this is the second one to turn up in the States, and like the previous one contained only the four 'set A' poses, originally about 36 sets of them.
Purely by a process of elimination (which is by no means accurate), I have tentatively identified these (‘T?’) as being from the other two sets in the Trojan Catalogue; Passengers and Rail Staff. Both are taken from the Britains/W.Horton/Trix (‘B’) range of ‘Trooscale’/Lilliput figures.Again, evidence - lack of size difference - points to Trojan (if it is them) getting hold of the moulds originally used for the metal ranges. The better detail on the plastic figures can be explained by the use of a different material in the mould, while the head/hat differences of the mother and daughter (Britains; No.LB/517 Nurse and Child) is easily explained as being due to flash rather than remoulding.
C is for Crescent
Leading on from the previous post one might as well have a look at the small scale output of Crescent, who seem to have provided the moulds (or some of them) for the Tiny Trojan military range. So here they are…
The Air-force figures, I’m pretty sure they’re all Crescent, the baton-wielding ground-crewman is not spelling out anything and always comes in this easy to damage pose, consequently he is (nearly) always missing at least one bat, and I’ve got a whole bag of similar can’t-direct-a-plane-for-toffee guys! However; once they’ve had a cross-pollination training weekend course with the Preiser synchronized swimming girls (which always end in drunken ribaldry in the Mastermodels ‘Dog and Partridge’), they learn to work in pairs, as these two are!
The top-left photograph shows on the right, a home-cast or other - more commercial? - piracy, something that happens with all these early metal figures, particularly; Skybirds (whom we look at below) and the pre- and immediate post-war Hornby Dublo railway figure sets, which we will look at another day.
Again; Colour variation in both uniforms and base-finish leads to a number of figures to track-down despite the low number of poses, and a seated pilot I’ve put in the Skybirds article lower down the page may be Crescent? Unlike the Army and Navy figures which were taken from the 54mm range, the Air-force/RAF figures seem unique to the small scale sets. A comparison with the Airfix figure shows how much larger these figures are.
The packaging is obviously not contemporaneous with the contents of this set, which would originally have been tied in with some unbleached or neutral coloured cotton thread; the mounting-card has also been lost over the years.
Of the three AFV’s the armoured car is more common than the two tanks, hinting at a smaller set with just the A/C and a few figures. The 4-post wire entanglements are from the large scale range and are over-scale for this set, but were included in it.
It’s hard to date the origins of the range that led to this set as the T34/85 is a late-/post-war Soviet standard, while the generic Cruiser/Covenanter is a pre-/early-war British item, this box would date from the late 1950’s (?), and the incongruous nature of the contents is not worth dwelling on as it’s almost certainly explained by a total lack of interest in accuracy on the part of the toy-makers.
“…Soldier…Sailor…”. Most of the Crescent small scale metal figures were scale-downs from their large scale hollow-cast range, but due to the small size are - in fact - solids. I’ve only found 6 poses, one of which – as we’ve already seen above – was not apparently produced by Trojan for reasons lost in the mists of time (the marching pose to the right of the lower line-up in the 2nd row), and they came in a wide range of colour-finishes, the later ones being all-over bar the hands, face and weapon, the earlier batches having separately painted bases.
The Naval personnel came with either a blue-green coating, a metallic ‘spirit’ finish along the lines of penny-toys (officer; top left) or in a more realistic navy-blue. These figures came in sets with small slush-cast naval vessels, again in the penny-toy style, with a coat of silver paint, and sometimes a weathering/antiquing in a darker wash or ink/stain. The tin-plate fort comes with the larger scale figures, but goes much better with these!
The semaphore-flag signalers, seem to have come in two versions; big flags (middle guy) and small flags (right-hand figure), but…when you look again at the chap on the left, it’s clear his right hand flag (left as you look), is not the same as the other two, his v-neck is shorter and he is taller, and apart from him; none of the other arms seem to have been accidentally bent?
Could these have come on a card spelling out something such as ‘Crescent’? I stress – I’ve only ever found them with their arms up, but the second and third figures definitely seem to be spelling two different letters?
The Air-force figures, I’m pretty sure they’re all Crescent, the baton-wielding ground-crewman is not spelling out anything and always comes in this easy to damage pose, consequently he is (nearly) always missing at least one bat, and I’ve got a whole bag of similar can’t-direct-a-plane-for-toffee guys! However; once they’ve had a cross-pollination training weekend course with the Preiser synchronized swimming girls (which always end in drunken ribaldry in the Mastermodels ‘Dog and Partridge’), they learn to work in pairs, as these two are!The top-left photograph shows on the right, a home-cast or other - more commercial? - piracy, something that happens with all these early metal figures, particularly; Skybirds (whom we look at below) and the pre- and immediate post-war Hornby Dublo railway figure sets, which we will look at another day.
Again; Colour variation in both uniforms and base-finish leads to a number of figures to track-down despite the low number of poses, and a seated pilot I’ve put in the Skybirds article lower down the page may be Crescent? Unlike the Army and Navy figures which were taken from the 54mm range, the Air-force/RAF figures seem unique to the small scale sets. A comparison with the Airfix figure shows how much larger these figures are.
R is for Railway figures
Returning to the Trojan article that launched this group of 8 posts, we find that the figures I believe to be the civilians from the Trojan Catalogue that’s been doing the rounds for a while now, are based on the Britains Lilliput series, itself probably produced/certainly marketed by W.Horton and also supplied to Trix, who drilled the bases and fixed them to their wooden station accessories (probably also - actually - made by W.Horton).
Top Left shows the same picture already seen in the Trojan Article, to the right is a ticket-issuer or platform vendor (?), the chap on the right has clearly been painted as a vendor of something rather than a member of Railway Staff.
Below them is the full range as I know it, the man at the back right is showing the hole used to fix him to a Trix platform. I’m not 100% sure about all the cargo, most is Britains/Horton/Trix, but some of the barrels may well be Wardie/Mastermodels, as might the small box on top of the two bigger ones? The trolleys; both powered and trailing, are marked ‘Trix’ and may well have been exclusive to them, although the powered trolley is listed in the Lilliput range (LB/549). Of interest is that Airfix (most pirated of companies after Britains), did themselves pirate the large box (Britains; No.LB/546 Large Packing Case) for their HO/OO strongpoint/outpost Playset type kits!
The last image is possibly the most interesting; as it shows the figures I used to think were the Trojan ones, even though they were hard styrene plastic, until I found an early Merit box with the same mouldings, it then transpired that they were ex-Wardie ‘Mastermodels’ moulds, which we now know emigrated to Merit upon the demise of the former. However by the time that had all come to light, the soft-plastic one had turned up and he took the mantle of ‘possibly Tiny Trojan’!
Mastermodels by Wardie have also been looked at in this series of articles and should be the next but one down the page, although - like the Hornby family (see note in the ‘Initial Article’ 3 posts above) - there is a lot more to the Wardie/Mastermodels, Merit/Model Scene, Peco/Guagemaster, Slater’s/Wills story than I’m ready [can be arsed] to cover here.
The Britains/Horton/Trix passengers/civilians with colour variations, again the Trojan photograph is re-produced bottom left. Bottom right shows another Trix mounting hole, and it’s interesting to note that some out-workers painted the woman with handbag as sometimes looking to the side, sometimes; looking forwards. The Golfer however has a pigs snout and can only be painted looking sideways, this WAS the era of ‘Animal Farm’!
To prove the necessity of my stressing that the identification of the Trojan civilians is still very tentative or conjectural, here are some other figures that contend for the title. Top left are some soft plastic/polyethylene figures based upon, but not the same as; the Wardie/Mastermodels set of stevedores (57), while to the right is a hard styrene better quality copy of one of the plank-carriers from the same set. Hammond states that there was plastic production at some point from B.J.Ward/Wardie, but the Brookes (who have done most of the work on the subject) don’t mention it, so it could be that the figure on the right is a late Mastermodels issue, and the figures on the left are just piracies? But…either could be the true Trojan figure/s?
Below them are the early Merit figures again, now; usually the Merit figures from Wardie are taken from the same moulds (the Merit ‘Remote Control Driving Test’ game playing pieces for instance), but these are clearly more of a piracy thing, the cut of the waistcoat of the porter carrying luggage makes a good comparison. Merit did copy a lot, so it may be that these were copied before the ex-Wardie people carried the moulds over to Merit as they went bust, which is one version of the tale…
Bottom is the replacement Merit set with both Merit and the current/late (?) Model Scene packaging, note; Model Scene issue/issued theirs without bases.
The Salisbury Station unit from Trix, probably made by W.Horton who also supplied 54mm scenics to Britains who made the Lilliput range of OO gauge figures that Trix used on their TT gauge Railway sets…clear?!
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