Smoking Man With Tie (1/35)

The postman brought me a package the other day. A 1:35 scale figure of a smoking man made by the company of Balaton Modell, Hungary. It's a pleasure to discover yet another nice figure to populate my little layout. Particularly as the model has a nice slightly overweight look to it.

Although labelled as 'Smoking men, 1930-1945' (in plural) there is only one figure in the ziplock pack. The figure has not been cleaned up in the photo.

While the figure according to the label is placed in the World War 2 time frame I can see a great likeness to some of the friendly taxi drivers of Moscow, Kaunas and Budapest that have helped me get from place to place. No matter what, I'll get him to fit in around Nystrup! Only very little flash will have to be removed before the figure is ready for primer and painting.

Balaton Modell has a lot of other interesting civilian kits in 1:35. Just think of a East German Barkas B 1000 or a IFA W50 - or the Soviet buldozer DT-74.

Fire Brigade Land Rover (1/35)

There wasn't a fire station in Nystrup before 1950 when a volunteer fire brigade was established. Until then the nearest fire station was in Skovby where the company 'Zonen' had a station with two fire engines, two recovery vehicles and an ambulance. A brand new Land Rover series 1 fire tender equipped the team of volunteer fire fighters in Nystrup. I'm currently building that particular Land Rover from a Roadcraft 1:35 kit.

All four wheels touch the cutting mat and the chassis is level. The result of a somewhat fiddly proces which I wouldn't recommend to anyone without some experience with short run kits.

Test fitting the three main resin body parts to check for any alignment issues. It looks like a Land Rover!

After having fitted the spring assemblies permanently I glued on axles, gearbox and other chassis details with AC glue. With all chassis parts in place I fixed the wheels with slow drying two part epoxy. With the slow setting glue I had a whole evening to check and adjust wheel settings.

With the wheels fitted I just added the front bumper and I had a complete chassis. Only the driveshaft to the rear mounted pump is missing as it has to be glued to the underside of the rear body.

The finished chassis seen from above. All parts fit well, but it's quite a job to get everything in place in such a tight space.

I'm now in the proces of fitting the main body to the chassis. For readers who can't wait to see a finished Land Rover fire tender check this gallery at Track-Link. The only finished Roadcraft Land Rover kit I have seen photos of.

New Photo of my Grandad

In Denmark the majority of national and local archives are gradually making their collections available online. That makes it much easier to find interesting stuff. Recently a new photo of my granddad has come to light. I have shown images of him and his loco before.

Grandad on a JWE-loco with gas generator. The train is photographed on Orebo brick work's clay pit with three skips. This new image is the first I have seen where the gas generator installation is clearly visible from the rear. The original cast steel rear buffer was moved to the front, but it seems the ability to couple skips to the loco's rear end was retained. Image: Lokalhistorisk Arkiv og Forening i Allerød Kommune. Crop of download from arkiv.dk

The photo belongs to a local historical archive in Allerød north of Copenhagen. The archive has captioned the photo as coming from Allerød brick works. Allerød is almost 100 km. north of Orebo where my grandad worked during the 1940’s. The good people at the archive can’t be expected to be experts on industrial narrow gauge internal combustion locomotives, so the miscaption probably isn’t that surprising.