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678 Posts
Hi,
The current state of my collection, to be employed on my layout as progress allows
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![Automotive parking light Car Motor vehicle Product Automotive lighting]()
When I started this collection in '05 there was very little available to truly sit well with a modern British outline layout. There were - and still are - poorly proportioned white-metal and resin examples from a number of suppliers aimed at the British market, and offerings from mainland Europe which although being much more acceptable in looks and time period are produced to the smaller 1/160 scale.
The Japanese came to the rescue with quality models of modern vehicles made to 1/150 scale, very acceptable both in looks and compatibility with 1/148 railway models. They do, naturally, represent Japanese prototypes but I'm happy in this scale that differences are not too terribly obvious, and with globalisation not only are there many of those on British and European roads, but in styling vehicles from almost anywhere in the world today follow similar trends. I have a couple of Mercedes vans by Busch; DHL and FedEx branded for my underground parcels depot which will help disguise their underscale nature, even the inevitable generic Chinese are pretty acceptable, although they too will mostly serve partly hidden away in a multi-storey car park and on the lower deck of some Cartic-4 NGS wagons on my 'to do' list.
In my photo you'll see examples from Tomytec, Bandai and now Fujimoto Hobby, supported by my original Intertrans 148 lorries and the more recent Oxford FX4 taxi massed ranks and those Chinese cars.
I also have a very few kits which will be useful, but I will be in need of a goodly number of quality modern British busses, double and single deck, and there's nothing of that nature even promised yet.
The future looks to be shaping up quite well, if only with the prospect of better British prototypes from earlier periods than I'm looking for announced so far from both Bachmann and Oxford - some of those are very tempting, but I would have to include some kind of transport museum to justify buying them for the layout.
While Bachmann and Dapol vie with each other to get the latest livery on Class 66's onto the market, and we have other very modern railway models, it's frustrating to see that the intended new road vehicle models hardly scrape into the last couple of decades.
If the Japanese ever see this as an 'open goal'...
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Regards, Gerry.
The current state of my collection, to be employed on my layout as progress allows
When I started this collection in '05 there was very little available to truly sit well with a modern British outline layout. There were - and still are - poorly proportioned white-metal and resin examples from a number of suppliers aimed at the British market, and offerings from mainland Europe which although being much more acceptable in looks and time period are produced to the smaller 1/160 scale.
The Japanese came to the rescue with quality models of modern vehicles made to 1/150 scale, very acceptable both in looks and compatibility with 1/148 railway models. They do, naturally, represent Japanese prototypes but I'm happy in this scale that differences are not too terribly obvious, and with globalisation not only are there many of those on British and European roads, but in styling vehicles from almost anywhere in the world today follow similar trends. I have a couple of Mercedes vans by Busch; DHL and FedEx branded for my underground parcels depot which will help disguise their underscale nature, even the inevitable generic Chinese are pretty acceptable, although they too will mostly serve partly hidden away in a multi-storey car park and on the lower deck of some Cartic-4 NGS wagons on my 'to do' list.
In my photo you'll see examples from Tomytec, Bandai and now Fujimoto Hobby, supported by my original Intertrans 148 lorries and the more recent Oxford FX4 taxi massed ranks and those Chinese cars.
I also have a very few kits which will be useful, but I will be in need of a goodly number of quality modern British busses, double and single deck, and there's nothing of that nature even promised yet.
The future looks to be shaping up quite well, if only with the prospect of better British prototypes from earlier periods than I'm looking for announced so far from both Bachmann and Oxford - some of those are very tempting, but I would have to include some kind of transport museum to justify buying them for the layout.
While Bachmann and Dapol vie with each other to get the latest livery on Class 66's onto the market, and we have other very modern railway models, it's frustrating to see that the intended new road vehicle models hardly scrape into the last couple of decades.
If the Japanese ever see this as an 'open goal'...
Regards, Gerry.
