New Recruits and Imported Goods

A lick of paint.........assorted additions

Following the 'train game', I've been tying up a few loose ends. This will be a slightly shorter than usual post as life is getting busier by the day and I am working on a substantial (I hope) post for  the festive season. Best laid plans etc...but we shall see.

I had a number of  pieces either part painted or just waiting their turn and I have finished quite a few of them. Here are the results for your perusal.

The milkman was a ready painted gift from my good friend John some time ago. I already had the Britains Dairy cart, but it was more than a little shabby and the horse with it consistently fell from the shafts when the cart was moved. so a sympathetic overpaint, carefully avoiding the original transfers was carried out. I wired the horse to the cart shafts and also glued it to a base for even more stability, before repainting it as well. The original model came with milk churns and I had half a dozen of these in my lead pile, but with no lids. I made the lids out of small plastic shields made by Games Workshop and a little nob of green stuff. More paint and then a gloss varnish. The end result is both stable and 'shiny' and I am quite pleased with it.  

In this photo you see the fourth recruit to my 'street gang' who I have obviously nicknamed the 'Peeky Blinders', at least for now. This is a fairly common Britains figure and I have just undercoated another to join these young men. They are of course accompanied by their 'dead hard' canine and are due to receive an even more menacing recruit in the next few days.  Obviously these figures can be used as ordinary citizens but I quite like the potential of involving semi armed citizens in a scenario. We shall see how that thought develops.

 

Here we see the new street vendor with his barrow. I haven't found anything for him to sell yet, but I will probably do two or three different lots of stock. The barrow was very kindly given to me by another good friend, Brian Carrick. He also gave me a nice figure to push the barrow, but I've found a better use for him as you will see in a later post. 

A Britains landgirl/farmhand and milkmaid. Both of these figures were in pretty good original paint condition with just a few signs of wear and tear. I therefore decided to just retouch them up and retain 90% of the original paint and patina. I have given them a new base and a coat of varnish however. This may seem like a crime against collectables but these are pretty common castings (in fact I think I have 2nd copies of both). Just retouching like this is something I like to do when the original casting is in nice condition but not mint.  

The beautiful Benbros Maid Marion has received the same treatment as the previous figures. She is a much more valuable/collectible figure but she had patches of exposed metal on her arms and head so I decided to 'tidy her up' as lightly as possible.

I am not sure who made the Chelsea pensioner, but I love the character in the figure. I think he was part of a mini diorama, being presented flowers by a young girl. I can see him presenting flowers to a member of the Royal family or putting flowers on the grave of an old comrade. His fighting days are done, but he will grace a future tableaux or two.

The kneeling Khaki Infantry Officer was an overpaint as well, but I think he's a conversion anyway. I am not sure Britains ever made this particular version. 

The splendid Officer is a slight overpaint as well. He will play a part in my Xmas tableaux. 

Waifs and strays.......Temu parcel

I was recently introduced to the Chinese website Temu. It's a bargain basement Amazon, where you can buy all sorts of goods. I have since placed two orders for a miscellany of items and thought I would share with you all, some of the range of interesting and useful items that I found. 

A set of resin printed barrels and crates. Perfect for barricades and wagon loads. I am already thinking about a brewers dray! I really need a brewery for my toy soldier world. Any ideas for a name? This set of 15 pieces cost £4.19! Just over 25 pence an item.

A resin cast Buddha (smaller than I expected...see my comments later about sizes) and a lovely fountain. £1.96  and £1.84 respectively.

Victorian lampposts. I already have a few quite nice examples. Far right is a metal recast I think. The middle one is a beautiful example made by the Lemax (Christmas Village) company. I bought 5 of the latter but they were far from cheap. The Chinese version costs less than 50p each and are  pretty good for the money in my view. I bought a dozen for £3.65. I shall pop them onto a wooden base to give them a bit more stability and 'jobs a good un!' They are black plastic with clear plastic windows in the top. 

Fruit trees. My Orchards always feel a bit thin with just the two Britains apple trees. These cost the huge sum of £3.98 for the pair!. Put on a decent base they will go quite nicely with the aforementioned apple trees (see 1st picture).

I can already hear cries of 'why are you throwing good money away for twigs and hay you could find for nothing? Convenience is my unashamed answer! I can't be bothered finding the right, dry material, tying it into bundles after cutting it to an appropriate length, when I could buy them for 50p a bundle. These are great and will provide loads for most of my farm wagons and carts. 

 

I have wanted to model a small graveyard for my churches for ages. Yes I could have made some tombstones out of balsa wood or foam card, but they wouldn't look as nice as these. £5.20 the lot. Can't wait to paint and landscape them.

Six feet of realistic roadway ready to be cut into more manageable lengths! This stuff looks and feels great. Its rough like sandpaper, but lies perfectly flat as you unroll it. That's my table top road surfaces finally sorted and all for the princely sum of £5.54!

So there you have it. Not everything I've bought (brushes and a pin vice and drills), but an idea of the sort of great little items you can buy to enhance your tabletop world. Cheap, postage free, and delivered to my door inside 10 days. I am not suggesting you buy any of the obviously counterfeit/copied goods, but I now know where a lot of the Amazon stock comes from! Identical products but a fraction of the Amazon price. Look at the Dolls house accessories, laser printed models, modelling supplies etc and you will find it hard to resist. I used Paypal so no card details given.

 My only words of warning relate to sizing and prices. If buying laser printed or resin cast models look carefully at the sizes in the description. Otherwise that Godzilla that you thought was cheap for £1.50 might be only 2 inches tall! Also, the same products seem to be available from multiple sellers, at the same time and for different prices. I have also noticed that the prices are not the same twice in a row. These points aside I have found the experience of shopping on Temu excellent.

As a final example, let me show you my makeup brushes! No I am not announcing a lifestyle change to the world! These makeup brushes have long been used for dry brushing models. I looked at some in the supermarket and they were over £5 for one larger brush. This set of 13 brushes cost £1.34!

 Well that's it for today. I hope you have found something of interest. My next post will not be until Christmas Eve, that's assuming life doesn't get in the way! 

Tara a bit!

Toy Fairs and Trains!

Waifs and Strays......The next train to arrive at platform one is the 3.30 from Malvern!

Last Sunday I ventured out in the Bentley to attend a toy fair at the Three Counties showground in the shadow of the Malvern Hills. A nice venue in a beautiful part of the world and a happy hunting ground for old lead treasure on previous visits.

The show is well attended by traders carrying all of the traditional toys and models that you might expect, trains, diecast cars, etc. This show doesn't seem to attract as many dealers in the post 1980's toys. It does however have a more rural air to it as the number of people selling model tractors testifies! 

I try to attend each one of these shows and normally find a reasonable number of new recruits for the armies and civilian population of Apperley Towers. This time however, I found hollow cast figures elusive, at least at the right price!

There was a dealer there that I haven't noticed previously who had bought along a large selection of Britains figures and military equipment. These all came from a collection he had recently acquired and were almost without exception in sparkling condition. Many looked brand new and I immediately spotted a number of pieces that would be extremely useful. Unfortunately the asking prices, not unfairly, reflected the quality and condition of the pieces. Sadly, this in some ways makes it easier for me to walk away. This isn't because I couldn't stretch my finances to buy a few nice items, but because I generally want them to play, with not just to collect for display. My happiest acquisitions remain the battered pieces that I find in trays for a pound or two, that I can strip and repaint. 

I asked the dealer if I could take a photo or two so that you can see why I was tempted!

So what did I find I hear you ask? Well I came back with just four figures!

A station master and a nice passenger, both by Johillco. The third figure is another (Britains) recruit for my 'Peaky Blinders'. £7 paid in total.

Some other finds ....

The tree was a nice find for £1. I love these to make little scenic vignettes for my cabinet displays. The fourth figure is a Britains jig driver which has previously eluded me. Missing an arm but for £1, I was more than happy. 

The cart was £2 and I find it hard to leave them behind at that sort of price. 

The broken gun was 50p! I see it as a nice little howitzer after a lick of paint. 

If that was it, I would have come home a little disappointed, but there were two more purchases which made it feel a worthwhile trip.

First of all was a Hornby O gauge water tower. It needs a new hose but is otherwise in good condition. This is the last piece of railway equipment that I have been looking to pick up and it has great potential for a spotter or sniper. 

That was another £5 well spent I feel. But my biggest purchase was saved for last. 

I love my little red loco as seen in  the last game I posted. I have however, been desirous of a more substantial loco. As will be evident, I have no expertise or knowledge about steam trains, but I just like the look of the bigger locos. The much larger ones would need Pullman carriages to look right and these would make the train so big, it wouldn't be practical for my tabletop. There was however a compromise in the form of  a number 1 loco. A much more substantial version of my basic red loco. I handed over £20 for this example which has finally scratched the itch so to speak. I think this completes my Hornby tin plate train collection but you never know............

So there we have it. Not my biggest haul, but a nice morning out and a few nice toys for the toy room. To be honest, I have a large backlog of figures awaiting the attention of my brush, so perhaps its just as well I didn't find hundreds of cheap hollow cast recruits!

A lick of paint.......Railway staff

Whilst looking for my earliest tin plate train acquisitions on E-bay, I also cast my eye enviously over the Britains railway staff that were up for sale. I eventually persuaded my banker to release sufficient funds and I bought a group of 6 figures together with some luggage. These figures are certainly pre war and possibly as old as the first war (I believe they were first sold in 1909 and withdrawn in 1941). I adore the patina these figures have and they have taunted me ever since they arrived. To repaint or not....that is the question?

As regular readers will know, this is not the first time this dilemma has occurred and it will certainly not be the last! This group are from from mint condition but they still have 90% of their original paint and with the exception of the  signal figure (5th from the left), are undamaged. I decided to put this set away for a while and ruminate on the situation. In the intervening months I acquired a few more of these figures in poorer condition or as in one case, a modern recast. This has given me the opportunity to 'repaint them' without repainting them if you catch my drift!

At the time of writing I have finished the porter pushing the luggage trolley, the ticket inspector and the station master. My aim was to reproduce the paint work as closely as possible to the first figures. Obviously they will always look shinier because I gloss varnish all of my figures, but I leave it to you to decide which you prefer. 

In this photo, you can see I have repainted all of the luggage that came with the trolley. This was not a difficult decision as the luggage had lost 50% or more of the original paintwork. You can also see the (recast) signalman and a repaired porter who will be painted next. If I can find another porter figure to complete the set I will keep the original set as is and display them where they belong with the train station. The newly painted figures can then take their chances with the rest of the Apperley Towers civilian population on the wargames table!

The consensus of opinion following my last post was that people like my photo heavy posts, so I have taken the liberty of setting up my railway collection for a photo shoot which I hope you will enjoy!

 

The last few photos illustrate the difference between the two loco's. The size, and level of detail is obviously significant and although photos can't illustrate this, the weight difference is considerable. I am however happy to have two trains to play with!

Three cheers for.......'The Hornby Gauge O System'.....The Hornby Companion Series Volume 5

I discovered this somewhat hefty tome whilst running 'Hornby O Gauge' searches on E-Bay. As I have freely admitted I am not a 'train man' and certainly not an expert on Hornby O gauge models. This book looked like an interesting addition to the Apperley Towers library and would help me to navigate this 'new territory', whilst trying to purchase the pieces I thought would add play value to my wargames. It turned out to be a great decision and whilst my copy is a very well read book, it has been an invaluable guide and reference work. Its also got lots of very inspirational photos, showing the full breadth and width of the toys made. Believe me....there were a huge number of items! I picked up this well worn copy for £10 and can wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone interested in the subject. 

A few random page shots from the book. It is over 400 pages, with at least the same number of photographs. 

Well that's all for this post. It seems to have turned in to a Hornby train 'special edition' and to those of my readers who are only really interested in military subjects I apologise....but not too vigorously! I know that more than one or two of my regular readers have an interest in this subject and hopefully will have enjoyed reading about my adventures down this particular rabbit hole! 

Tara a bit!