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.

Sunday, March 18, 2018

T is for Two - Two Tanks

An all-contribution post now with two AFV's from Adrian and Brian, we'll start with the newer, as it's so whacky it almost got its own post, but I remembered the other one was sat in the big folder from last September, so it became a 'T is for Two...' trope post instead!

Now, I'm not stretching the hyperbole to state WTF? here, am I? What The-very-actual Flipp'in Ada is going on here!??

I think it's a junior-school-gymnasium-type-piece-of-padded-play-equipment-type-thing? Anyway; whatever it is, it's hanging from a building in downtown Philadelphia! Uptown? Pennsylvania? Brian will correct me!

Now, I was taken by the fact that once you get over a large padded, vinyl tank - which looks like it should be in The Beatle's Yellow Submarine - hanging from the side of a building, you realise you are in a street of timeless quaintness. The sort of mews or side street you might find in London, Birmingham (that's Birbig'um, Ingerland; not Burmin'um, Alerbammy) or even Amsterdam? . . . or, maybe, even Birmingham, Alabama?

And while - if it were a mews in London - you'd expect it to be grade-II listed, the fact that the shackles are in the woodwork of the windows rather than the masonry, suggests a similar protection order? Altogether a fascinating and amusing couple of pictures - Thanks to Mr Berke for spotting it, and sending them to the Blog. Apart from the brightly coloured tank, it looks like a film set!

Brian suggested it no longer fit the 'small scale world', but it's small enough!

I shot this on Adrian's Mercator Trading stand at the September Sandown Park show, you often see these about at shows, but usually in a plain paint scheme, this one was leery enough to be worth shooting.

I'm guessing French, although I think Johillco had a couple of few in their inter-war catalogues and lots of other people had a go; in real life it was the first major volume-production Tank, sold whole, as kits, hulls & running-gear only or simply licensed to armies all over the world for many years, and there's a whole toy collection to be had just in model Renault F17's and the many variants/derivatives!

Again I'm only guessing, but are the tracks replacements from Meccano? Usually when you see these (in green, more commonly grey, or a three-colour 'blob' camouflage) they are either trackless or tentatively holding-on to blobs of semi-melted, semi-cracked India-rubber or leather of some kind, but these look a tad too well preserved? Still it's a good way of replacing the missing originals and that form of Meccano track is probably contemporary with the model.

3 comments:

Terranova47 said...

This part of Philadelphia is known as Center City

Brian Carrick said...

I think the tracks are original, I have some tinplate tanks with very similar tracks and if you look carefully at the wheels you can see the are grooves on the rims that fit the width of these tracks perfectly.

Hugh Walter said...

Cheers Terranova, I copied all the notes from Mr. B into the folder but he's sent so much stuff since Christmas it's all got a bit confusing!

H