F is for Future-Past Freight Fleet

Once you have your Space/Airfield, you will need a train, because - as I'm sure we all know - in the future-retro-past of the 1950's, most industrial or commercial hubs of any size had a railway service and/or sidings, before the fall of Dr. Beeching's axe, even funny little places like Tongham, near Aldershot used to have a loading dock and sidings, so it was no surprise that in discussing the transfers Brian had on his Convertiplane (previous post), a liveried Spacefleet railway was revealed!

Shades of Triang's Battlespace, but in a clean 'NASA' aesthetic, and bedecked with the Spacefleet logo, with slightly 1984/Big Brother'esque 'wanted posters' of the Mekon on the wagon ends - know your enemy! Again in his own words and first answering my question about the transfers, here's Brian;

 

"The decals are homemade. The art was scanned from one of the Dan Dare reprint books and lazer printed onto decal film. A while ago, I created a freight train of Spacefleet vans and containers using the same decals . . . Dapol has a small range of undecorated rolling stock. When I found out, I couldn't resist."

 

And while I will often crop/edit images from contributors, even Brian's, I've left these at the full, standard 4x3, as the backgrounds are so interesting and full of stuff, mostly a whole London Bus depot! Which we've seen shots of before, here, with rampaging dinosaurs, I think!

 

Thanking Brian for the above, I thought the army in the background of the Helicar landing platform was well-set, in the same future-past, with late war Cromwell's and Quad's, supporting post-war Saracen's and Saladin's! There's even a matador there, and they soldiered-on for many years, ending up as local garage (service station) wreaker/tow-truck or yard crane conversions, well into my childhood.

 

The cars, which I was equally taken with, Brian explained are the Hot Wheels Dream Mobile, which is a recreation of an earlier 1950's Mattel toy; the Dream Car, a 'space age' or concept car. There's a kingfisher-blue one which might have my name on it, in the near future . . . past?

BMSS is for British Model Soldier Show!

As I mentioned earlier, I popped-over to the BMSS (Society!) show in Reading on Saturday, for support really, I wasn't buying, and while I got there a bit late, the entry-fee was collected against future show organising, and I took a few shots of the competition entries while I was there.

Junior effort, I couldn't have done something this good at 9

I know, because I tried!

Old School!

This was beautiful!

Fantasy, winged witches!

Beautifully executed fun!

Tommy Atkins, 'Dusty' Miller and 'Snowy' White!

These might be Airfix Multipose?

Cold! General Winter!

Northamptonshire's BMSS branch table.

 

Aldershot's table, I think there had been a modelling/painting display, but it was getting toward home-time. They used to organise their own show, in February, but it went the way of all flesh some time ago, one of my first big-purchases was from that show back in 1991 when it was still held in Fleet Library, or the adjoining Hartington centre, if I recall correctly?

You wouldn't want it up you, Captain Mainwaring!

You really wouldn't want it up you!

The Oxford branch, I was tickled by the St Trinian's flats

I can't find them on Google, but definitely fun!

Despite knowing Reading all my life, and managing to find the venue (and a free, legal car parking space) without trouble, I managed to take the wrong exit off the roundabout, going home, and got lost in a town-centre I no longer recognise, before taking the wrong road out of town (Early/Mortimer, not Swallowfield/Heckfield!), a road I also barely recognised!

The amount of development, in just the last fifteen or twenty years is staggering, the flight of industry, the population explosion (nationwide - 10-million, since the Tories came to power, most of it 'legal' migration), makes you realise how insignificant your 60/80-years here, actually are. When I was born in '64, Reading was already in the midst of a major post-war development boom, with new factories springing-up everywhere, but they've all gone, replaced by housing, and the centre has been rebuilt three-times?

Yet, once you get out of the city-proper, the old lanes have hardly changed at all in my whole lifetime, the same daftly tight-bends, narrow passing and overhanging foliage seem timeless, as you pootle through the old villages and hamlets, but a lot of the pubs are boarded-up or already converted to homes, as are most of the village shops!

The point this slightly-sad reminiscing is getting to, is that the show is best described as quiet, gentile, unhurried, and one wonders how many more there may be, from the heady days of filling the Royal National, so next year, try to get over if you missed it this year, like parents, pets or a favourite T-shirt (yes, I just listed them together!), you'll miss it when it's gone.

H is for Hamleys, or Harrods . . . ?

OK, I'm presenting these as they are, recolouring renders them pretty awful, and 'adjust contrast' has little effect as they are firmly in the all-orange-brown spectrum! Among the odder things in the archive, and I'm sure there are better quality versions in the Library of Congress, or the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building of the New York Public Library service, but I don't have either of them, here, in a file! While Google suggests, this 'Junior' supplement for 1939 isn't online in an easily visible fashion, while you need valid Library cards to read the originals held by the aforementioned bodies!

 

Also, I don't know how big they will present, until I've hit 'Publish', but I hope if you click and click again, you should get a pretty mahoosive image to track-around, and hopefully read the less than helpful blurb panels for yourselves?

 

A minute after publishing - yes, the detail is actually very good, find the Adrien helmets hiding behind the logs . . . I've never noticed them! Later still - She's a 'he' (now adjusted, Brylcreem has a lot to answer-for!) and it may all be one piece, still in the workshop? The ornamental elephants in one background (probably real ivory) suggest it could be Harrods?

 

For Junior! See what the crazy Europeans are doing this holiday!

 

If he is working on the back of the big cliff, bottom left, then it could be an in-store display, rather than a window display? I suspect it's several dioramas on a theme (rather the aesthetics of the last/previous war, with the 'sci-fi' Maginot Line and half-tracks!), probably running along a line of pavement-facing windows.

This one recoloured slightly! They almost look like old Egyptian papyrus, which adds to their charm! But they are as brittle as old papyrus, too, so I didn't dare bend-back the little nick in the join on the Ack-Ack gun picture.

 

Within the blurb, credited at one point to British Combine, presumably a forerunner of today's 'press pools', and cleared by the British Censor, the only real clue to where these might have been is in the title-line "Offered in West End Shops", clearly then, this is the myth of patriotism, being used, as it always is, to get people used to and ready for war, a war which was - at the time - still in it's 'phoney' phase.

The hype surrounding the Maginot Line, was so strong that articles with lovely little isometric cutaway drawings, and maps of it, were still a favourite of 'Boys Own' books and seasonal annuals when I was still a kid. It's faded now, and while still controversial, most have accepted the truth of history - it was a very, very expensive white elephant, and complete failure, which tied-up tens of thousands of troops badly needed in Belgium, who never launched a counter-attack, nor got to Dunkirk, to be taken-off, either!

It'll mostly be Britains and Astra Pharos (?) I think, with the small tank from Hornby/Dinky maybe? And you would imagine they were in Hamleys windows, but Harrods were equally famous for theirs, and this could have been tucked down one of the side streets, where the windows have to be sought out, leaving the well-known frontage for fashion and household gifts?

 

The blurb also hints at animatronics, such as the mentioned elevators, another standard of such statement, seasonal window-displays back then, hell, Fleet Toys still had busy displays in the 1980's, think - a bunch of woodland animals playing instruments in the snow, Santa popping out of a chimney, an ammunition-lift to supply the gun, to kill Germans, all good, clean, Crimbo' fun!

I know, I'm over-thinking it, but isn't that half the fun of archivism? The what-if's, or what-actually's!

I is for It's all Happening Down at Pirate Cove!

So, ITLAPD last year was barely cold when these arrived in the eMail from Brian Berke in the 'States, and they are facinateing, although the link with pirates is tenuous, as their recorded activity occurred before the current stone fort was built, but it's (the diorama) redolent with pirate 'stuff'!

Brain has been building a diorama of an action involving the redcoats evicting some pirates from a lair based on Fort Matansas, which guards the rear-approach of the former Spanish city of St. Augustine, now in Florida (. . . now in America, it was always in Florida and isn't something you could move an inch as the British found out; twice!), and while I can't add much blurb, I've sorted it into planning, finished model and real fort - well, that's how they were sent to me!

Italics are Brian's words;

 

The background story is the Royal Navy decided to capture the Fort held by pirates by landing at dawn.

To the Marines dismay the pirate lookouts were alert enough to see their approach.

The fort's defenses cannot lower their swivel guns to the shore and the boat crew cannot fire until they have reloaded with grapeshot. If fast enough the doors may be blown before canon are brought into play.

Using the Revell pirate ship (recently re-issued as the Black Pearl) to plan the layout.

Starting to place the larger elements.

The display case from IKEA the diorama was planned to fit in turned out to be too small once the boat was assembled. It took a while to find another which for the moment will do to protect it.

I think there may be a basketball display case that would be better suited.

The . . [next three] . . pictures show the Marine officer leading the sailor with a barrel of gunpowder to blow the doors.

The brown dinghy on the shore to the left is an old Tri-ang item originally on a clockwork cabin cruiser back in the 50's. The three long boats at the galleon stern were from Revell's HMS Bounty and Endeavour which were the same model in different boxes also back in the 50's. They had been in a box of bits from my 50's railway. The Dory's are from the PYRO Schooner.

The two cannon on the shore outside the walls were RIPMAX, a company that made marine model accessories. They had a shop in Camden Town that I used to buy kits both plastic and Balsa at. I bought them to convert a Merit kit of a Chinese Junk into a pirate vessel back in the 50's.

In-situ, if only a temporary display-case.

On the stern is the Long John Silver figure with a green parrot on his shoulder.

The pirates are mostly Peter Pig. No idea where the others originated they were part of a bid on mixed metal figures of various scales on eBay many years back.

The actual Fort Matanzas; you can read-up on it here.

Cheers Brian, a brilliant idea, well-executed and thanks for sharing it with the rest of us!