About Me

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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.

Wednesday, June 8, 2011

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-WardieMastermodels’ 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 MeritRemote 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?!

2 comments:

jon attwood said...

Hello, I,ve just been reading 'the illustrated kemlows story' by paul brookes, it has helped get my collection in order, and I think some of the information would be worth repeating here.
The plastic set identified as merit piracies was initially made by wardie in plastic, and has been seen sealed in wardie packaging. The moulds were manufactured by collis plastics (a couple of doors along from wardie's works), collis also made moulds for randalls. They may have actually owned the moulds and leased them or had some sort of HP scheme to the companies concerned, helping to spread the large initial tooling costs.
There may have been some other mould transfers before collis appeared on the scene, as the early issues of wardies set 1 railway staff appear identical to the horton/trix ones apart from the bases, later wardie issues of this set were remoulded and show a few differences, most notably in the buttons on the coats, the stationmaster and newsboy were replaced with new poses when this change took place.
The plastic match carrier in the brown shirt is most likely a wardie plastic too, as the crew unloading trucks set was reissued in plastic with the same colour scheme

Hugh Walter said...

Cheers Jon, It's a subject I will return to, I think I now have all four of the Tiny Trojan rail staff, and more on all. There's also a very good booklet/checklist (which does list the plastic sets at the end) on B.J.Ward[ie]/Mastermodels, and I spoke to the authors at the lovely Arlesford railway show, and he said some of the moulds/tools were carried 'across the road' from Ward's factory to Merit's upon the demise - suddenly one morning, as it where - of the former.

I also tried to get the story of the Slater's versions from the old boss of PPP/Guagemaster (who have whatever's left of all of it under their wing) when he was at the London Toy Fair about 2006, and he just raised his eyes to the heavens as if to say "Have you got a week to listen!"

But they still carry both the early ex-Wardie Merit, under their Model Scene label AND the unpainted Slater's 'wagon wheels' of the same sculpts?

H