Further to the previous post, I have gone further down the rabbit hole and acquired a second-hand Signal Box (or Cabin) for my toy railway. It was at a reasonable price from an online shop based in England, however once tracked mail, customs duty and administration charges were added, the price tripled!?! I have decided that any further building works for the railway will have to be home made...
Anyway, there follows some gratuitous pictures of the purchase. There are a couple of chips in the paint but nothing to trouble the passengers.
Out of interest I did a bit of digging on the internet and came across the Pre-WW2 versions of Hornby's Railway buildings which were made of wood but were still rather stylish. They have given me a bit of inspiration for future railway related projects!
I have given up buying internationally. The prices shot up a few years ago and just seem to be getting higher and higher. Bring back the good old days!
ReplyDeleteThe "Old Ways" are the best Steve! 😜
Deletethey look good, anyway - I'm sure that wooden block style coluld be emulated by a DIY'er?
ReplyDeleteIs there any likelyhood of wargame/railway crossover, like a supply train under attack? I'm sure a Charles S Grant's 'Table Top Teasers' included one or two of those..
Thanks David - I have used my railway parts in a few games, including the Grant Railway Incident Teaser (see https://pampersandp.blogspot.com/2018/02/a-small-railway-incident.html). The two hobbies crossover well in my opinion.
DeleteI have several items of these metal train buildings still (the platforms and main station belonged to other members of the family), they used to form parts of many Airfix figure war games and I really liked things like the steps up to another level or the details.
ReplyDeleteRailways still play a part in my games so have an occasional crossover blog https://sidetracked2017blog.wordpress.com/
Thanks Mark. Yes your blog, along with Alan's and Bob's have been very inspirational!
DeleteThe wooden buildings look very stylish and simple designs. Definitely inspirational.
ReplyDeleteThey're very attractive toys and eminently reproducible I think
DeleteHey - I had one of those exact signal boxes as a kid 😊
ReplyDeleteAlthough I had a small amount of railway kit I always used the signal box as an RAF control tower. There was a clay pit nearby, so I <> “acquired” a bucket of clay which allowed me to mould rudimentary terrain. In retrospect this wasn’t a particularly smart move - the clay meant I went for the Western Desert, but surely airfields would have been FLAT rather than rocky hills and sandy dunes…? Oh well, at 7 or 8 years old I suppose I was too young to know better. And my “wargaming” consisted to buzzing over with a plane in my hand and going rat-a-tat-tat as it shot up the tanks below.
Cheers,
Geoff
Thanks Geoff - yes it does have the look of a control tower / pill box (at the bottom). I'm sure that many became 2nd generation toys for battle games.
DeleteGreat stuff!
ReplyDeleteInterestingly l was very tempted to buy into this stuff a few months back. I love the Art Deco look of much of it. I look forward to seeing this project develop and may succumb personally even yet…
Alan Tradgardland
Thanks Alan - the Deco like design of this range of toys was really very engaging. An Uncle of mine, who was born just after the end of WW2, has quite a large collection of Dublo from this era he had as a child; they are definitely Toys rather than Models and have that slightly more solid feel to them.
DeleteI can second that it's expensive to buy things online when coming to shipping, handling fees and taxes. For international orders there are custom charges as well. And everything of all these are really expensive in Norway, so when added to a 'model' it makes it many times more expensive. Therefore I only buy things online I really wants. Except from them I search whats available on Norwegian swap meetings, shows and exhibitions. Model railway stuff is pretty easy to get here, but toy soldiers for wargaming is like impossible.
ReplyDeleteYour Signal Box looks very good and is a real classic.
Cheers Roger. I try to shop within the EU now (to avoid duties) though it's not always possible to get what I want - c'est la vie.
DeleteEBay is my friend. There are a few items I have automatic searches in place for a number of years now. Sooner or later they will show up!
ReplyDeleteMy experience with ebay has been about 90% positive though I don't use it so much now so I'm not sure if it's as good. Most sellers I have dealt with were pretty helpful and tried to keep postage costs down 👍
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