Shite in Miniature II

[Datsuncog]

13 minutes ago, RoadworkUK said:

If that Grey Green Plaxton Paramount happened to fall into your shopping bag, it wouldn't be such a bad eventuality....

And / or the Wallace Arnold Plaxton Excalibur / Premier, for that matter.

CURSES to the market and its ability to tempt me.

Heh, I'll take a wander back over at lunchtime, weather permitting, and see if they're still there... at £5 a throw, they seem a good price!

 

But... I didn't come away empty handed, either.

[Split_Pin]

Cheers for checking that Tim, too old a subject for me though. I think you may remember picking up a lot of HK 1970s and 1980s based ones from the market for me in the past though!

[Datsuncog]

So, y'know the way we've had discussions here in the past about 'charm', and how certain models just seem to have it?

This one has it.

In spades.

Ooft.

So, it's a Kirk model of a Mercedes-Benz O302 bus - not a name I've heard of before.

Some exceeding light Google-fu links it to Tekno, but I dunno if they acquired Kirk or if it was the brand they used for buses. More research required!

But it's glorious.

Quite a detailed working steering mechanism, with not only angle but also camber. I'll try to get a better pic of this - it's sprung, and I don't have enough hands to hold it, turn the wheels and take a photo too.

Gem-cut glass headlights look like they're actually glowing.

Engine detailing is ridiculously good for the era.

And, of course the engine flap opens.

Everything opens.

Everything.

The detail is simply tremendous on this.

Dash, steering column - the works. And get a load of the wheeltrims.

The seats are individually moulded and fitted, not just part of a general interior moulding.

Floors and steps are textured, too, and the casting is so crisp, with vents and badging really neatly modelled.

While I'm not that much of a bus fanboy, it's hard to express just how delighted I am with this. It's far from perfect, but I reckon it should still display well.

And there's even a vague local link - a trial Ulsterbus O203 used to do the airport express between the Europa bus centre and Belfast International Airport at the tail end of the 1960s, and this isn't all that far off its livery.

So - I think this was worth arriving in work with wet feet!

Happy Friday, cats and kittens.

[bunglebus]

46 minutes ago, Datsuncog said:

Dinky Beetle

If that was sub £5 I'd be interested for a resto project.

I'm also not really into busses/commercials but that ^ is a lovely bit of kit. Still just about "toy" rather than "model", but a glorious one

[Datsuncog]

Just now, bunglebus said:

If that was sub £5 I'd be interested for a resto project

Tenner quoted on it, I'm afraid!

[bunglebus]

1 minute ago, Datsuncog said:

Tenner quoted on it, I'm afraid!

Sod that. I've been trying to score one from eBay for not too much money as I fancy doing one up. To be fair I have just won one but it may be Too nice to mess with. We'll see.

[sierraman]

2 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

Sod that. I've been trying to score one from eBay for not too much money as I fancy doing one up. To be fair I have just won one but it may be Too nice to mess with. We'll see.

This is what happens with me, I buy a wreck then decide it’s too good to restore... it has to be a completely hopeless case like the SM I restored earlier in the year. 

[bunglebus]

Yeah. That:

Looks like a resto candidate. This:

Not so much. My current one could really do with it but it's the unusual ADAC colours so I'm leaving it alone

I do have the Atlas repro

And not forgetting this excellent creation

[Datsuncog]

It appears that the Merc bus was also available with Tekno badging too.

Not sure which name came first - but, having checked out some of the eBay pricing, I don't think a paying tenner for it was at all unreasonable.

Seems that it was also available in kit form, in a different box - so I wonder if Kirk was the brand name put on kit versions of Tekno models?

Maybe that explains why it all seems to be snapped together, with no rivets, screws or other metal fixings.

Interesting!

 

(Well, to me, anyway...)

[Datsuncog]

15 minutes ago, bunglebus said:

Yeah. That:

Looks like a resto candidate.

I'll nip over again in half an hour and flutter my eyelashes a bit - if he'd do the Beetle for a fiver, would that be reasonable enough?

Obviously less is better...

[bunglebus]

Cheers, not sure quite why they seem to demand the price they do, seems like Dinky made nearly as many as VW did the real thing

[Datsuncog]

Had a bit of a play-around with the wheels on the bus:

Not that easy to see, but the pinions that hold the steering assembly on are mounted at a near-45° angle, so the wheel camber changes as it's turned...

As I say, the steering seems to be sprung so it reverts to centre once pressure is released - and so can't be displayed with the wheels turned outward - but it also seems to function as a sort of Tiptronic steering, where pressing down on one side near the front while pushing it makes the bus turn in the opposite direction.

Nice.

Although also mildly embarrassing when your senior manager walks in and catches you shoving a tiny bus across your desk, oblivious to everything...

I guess I could have claimed it was something to do with estimating the radial widths of proposed bus lane junctions in the new Belfast Harbour redevelopment scheme, but instead I just went a bit red and pretended to be getting on with typing up meeting minutes...

[Datsuncog]

Oh, and in all the bus excitement I forgot to highlight this shite delight on one of the other stalls this morning:

Yup, a very 1980s Betacom 'Betacar phone' in the shape of a Mercedes R107 SL hardtop...

"Talk in style"?

You betcha.

[Split_Pin]

That bus is just great, I love old and heavy model commercials from Europe.

[RoadworkUK]

That 0.302 is just gorgeous. Inexplicably, one of my secondary school bus contract routes was served by a Chartercoach Mercedes 0.303, which was virtually brand new at the time. It sounded tremendous with its OM442 V8.

[sierraman]

28 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

That bus is just great, I love old and heavy model commercials from Europe.

Siku commercials were just a thing of beauty. Especially the buses, I have a Siku Ford Cargo recovery vehicle, proper chunky thing it is. 

[Split_Pin]

10 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Siku commercials were just a thing of beauty. Especially the buses, I have a Siku Ford Cargo recovery vehicle, proper chunky thing it is. 

They are indeed. I have the Cargo artic with the helicopter, an Iveco Turbostar, Volvo F7 and a Renault Turboliner. The 1989 catalogue was well thumbed by me!

[Split_Pin]

I got what must have been at least 2 kilos of diecast from @Jon today when he visited me, good to meet you! 

I'm knocking off work early to open them up again and study them before reorganising my shelves so I can display them. Can't wait!

[sierraman]

23 minutes ago, Split_Pin said:

I got what must have been at least 2 kilos of diecast from @Jon today when he visited me, good to meet you! 

I'm knocking off work early to open them up again and study them before reorganising my shelves so I can display them. Can't wait!

I used to habitually arrive late when the pre-covid flea market was on a Monday. Pockets bulging with diecast complaining about the lousy bus service. 

[Datsuncog]

4 hours ago, RoadworkUK said:

If that Grey Green Plaxton Paramount happened to fall into your shopping bag, it wouldn't be such a bad eventuality....

And / or the Wallace Arnold Plaxton Excalibur / Premier, for that matter.

So I have good news...

2 hours ago, bunglebus said:

Yeah. That:

...and I have less good news.

[Datsuncog]

So I scuttled back to the market just after 12, with the rain still bucketing down. My hope was that the inclement weather would have discouraged many further diecast fondlers from rocking up to trawl the stall in the intervening hours.

There were a goodly amount of buses remaining, and it was a good/ bad result for @RoadworkUK (delete as applicable):

OOC Wallace Arnold Plaxton Premiere on a W-reg, and an EFE Grey Green Plaxton Paramount 3500 wearing a D-plate. Both look in as lovely a condition as you might wish - possibly never even out of their boxes - and not bad value at a fiver each. Yours whenever you want them, dude!

Sadly for @bunglebus, it seems that someone else had nabbed the Dinky Beetle at full asking, or else had come to an arrangement of sorts with Market Blokey. And the Lesney Foden too.

He was away from the stall when I arrived, so I only hope it wasn't anything depraved.

Because there are still loads of tourists filing through the market every Friday, it wouldn't surprise me if some were taking advantage of their suddenly very favourable exchange rate to stump up £10 for a very banged-up VW. Beetles may appeal to those not otherwise very interested in diecast?

There were a few other buses now rather more visible on the stall:

The other Plaxton Paramount appealed to me as it looked exactly like the kind of down-at-heel private hire coach we'd go be loaded onto for school trips in the mid-90s - but ultimately I felt it might be a purchase too far. 

I'm trying to keep it 1/43 or thereabouts for the collection.

Another sweep up top gave me more time to look at another Tekno bus that I also thought I'd taken pics of this morning, but obviously not:

This was nice.

Really nice.

I probably would have bought this over the Mercedes, except...

That missing engine cover would have bugged me forever.

Shame, as it was really very minty otherwise.

Not sure what word's been blanked out on the baseplate - 'Vabis', possibly?

But hey ho.

I'd overlooked this less common variant of the Matchbox Rolamatics Police Patrol earlier, in amongst the militaria:

But otherwise there wasn't much else to grab my attention.

I took a turn round the other stalls, but there wasn't an awful lot. Alan's Emporium was back, it seemed - having been absent since mid-2021 - but all he had on the stall were a few boxless Days Gone and some Pixar Cars models, so thankfully I wasn't tempted.

Although he did have a tray out.

And they were only 50p.

But luckily they were all just cheapo Chinese rubbish and therefore of no interest.

No interest at all...

Oh.

[bunglebus]

That'll be a High Speed VW Golf MK1. There are lots of variations! 

[Split_Pin]

It's been 15 minutes, is @Datsuncog alright there? 🤣

[bunglebus]

I've been crazy busy with work this month, hence the lack of custom diecast.

I have had a fiddle with the new 240 drift wagon, mainly a wheel swap, interior repaint and a bit of detail including possibly the most pointless thing I've ever done to a die cast - a couple of tiny dots of glow in dark paint for the eyes of the dogs that you can't even see.

I also tried to tint that yellow glass which turned into a disaster - there were marks on the sunroof part right out of the blister that wouldn't polish off, but I gave it a thorough clean and used black tail light tinting spray (i.e. meant for plastics). Loads of it hazed up so I tried sanding it all off, which is a PITA due to the B post being part of the glass, then I was going to clear lacquer it and go over that with the tint. It hazed in exactly the same places again, so I had to go and buy another one just for its glass!

Wheels are a bit sticky-outy but I can correct that. I'll probably go full custom with one of these at some point but that chrome interior was offending me deeply. Beige all the way with this one. Painted the nitrous bottle too, not that it shows!

Better

 

[bunglebus]

It may shock you, but occasionally I frequent other forums, one of which is for those funny little German cars with the engines in the wrong end.

Another member turned up this Hot Wheels King Kuda, which looks to me like a great resto candidate to go with the Nitty Gritty Kitty from a few months ago - so I bought it

Despite the kid paint, it seems to not be in terrible shape, the wheels are all in the right place rather than at the jaunty angles most of them seem to end up at after 50 years of abuse. Rolls nicely.

[Datsuncog]

What rubbish did I end up liberating, then?

I'm not really sure why, but - this lot:

The silver car is, reportedly, a VW Golf.

Or, going by its own decorations, a W Go.

It's endearingly rubbish, with its solid rear window.

Equally crap is this - which helpfully announces its lineage on the roof:

So we can infer that it's a Mercedes 450 SLC, and to be fair the proportions do look vaguely correct.

This one, however, is more of a mystery:

But I think it's an attempt at a MK3 Escort.

The overall shape seems not too far off...

While the rear lights do approximate that of the real thing. Kinda.

(Rubbish pics, I know)

The Fiat 131 is the one that attracted my attention - again, a valiant if ultimately underwhelming effort to have a bash at Fiat's family saloon of the 1970s.

It could be almost anything, but the roof tampo, Hofmeister kink to the rear window, and rear light treatment give us a clue.

It gets a back window, too.

Fancy.

All of these are seemingly made by High Speed in Macau - not that the bases give very much info.

The next one I nearly didn't get - I thought it was a BMW approximation until I looked closer:

I'd no idea anyone had ever modelled a Vauxhall Carlton Mk2/ Opel Omega A in this scale.

I mean, it's objectively crap and all, but still - a little fascinating all the same.

Not so much cast-in details, as pressed lightly against the mould.

No maker's details beneath.

Anyone else familiar with this one?

Finally, this - which just amused me.

I believe it's meant to be some sort of bodykitted Toyota Supra - I've definitely seen a better rendered version of this before - but, hilariously, it's gone through the tampo printing machine backwards and the so-cool flame effect for the roof now just looks like a pelican's shat on the windscreen.

Have you ever had a pelican shit on your windscreen from a great height? Don't, you won't like it.

It happened to me while driving through a small town in eastern Australia and I initially thought someone who didn't much care for out-of-towners had just thrown a bucket of yoghurt at my Holden Jackaroo.

So yeah - that's my mildly scatalogical reason for picking this one up.

The production date wheel on the base gives me a moulding date of May 2010 for this one, so it's maybe the newest.

They're awful. They're rubbish. I don't even know why I bought them.

All I can hope is that Alan spends my £3 wisely, and that I don't get rumbled trying to smuggle all these in through the front door...

 

And finally, a big shout-out to St George's Market - I've been thinking and thinking, and I genuinely don't believe there's any other place on earth where one can procure a 1970s Danish scale model of a bus, a seasonal flu jab, some hoover bags, and a sausage soda sandwich all under the same roof.

Gawd bless it.

[RoadworkUK]

Gawd bless it indeed! And Gawd bless you for giving me a reason to wake up on a Friday (and have less money and / or space).

Gawd bless us, every one.

(/Dickens)

[Split_Pin]

I couldn't wait to finish work for the day and get to work on the 1/24 Bburago Mercedes I bought from @Jon today. 

I decided the best thing to do was to take it apart so I could give it a thorough clean at the same time.

The steering wheel was detached as per most 1/24 BBuragos rhat don't have a steering function however it was on the back parcel shelf.

Reattached.

I gave everything a good clean with a tiny screwdriver sheathed in an antibacterial wipe. 

It looks great now. 

Now to get the rest of the collection on the shelves (not the shoes).

[bunglebus]

Those top ones are all High Speed, yes the M4 is the Mercedes 350 SLC

The 411 is the Fiat 131

And the M2 is indeed a MK3 Escort 

There are a myriad of colours available, and an interesting numbering system. Whereas the M4 is the Merc, M14 is the same car with a pull back motor

Then you've got the W5 Zakspeed Capri

W15 is the Pull back

And W115 is the same but with a wheelie function 

There are a few larger scale cars too as well as loads of 1:64s

[bunglebus]

1 hour ago, Datsuncog said:

Finally, this - which just amused me.

Summer. Mine do not have bird poop windscreens, I suspect that's a fairly glaring error

 

Top one has a chrome base!