Airfix no more

But who's to say whether your quote or what I read (elsewhere, not in MREmag) is correct? There are often multiple interpretations of the same facts.

MBQ

Daily telegraph 01/09/2006 "A dispute with the management of the company in France which holds the moulds for its hundreds of different models has meant that efforts by brand owners Humbrol to restructure their debt foundered [...] disruption to supplies brought about by the insolvency of its principal manufacturing supplier Heller, in France"

It doesn't actually say whether Heller own the moulds or not.

MBQ

If French receivers are as avaricious as UK ones, then they will hold on to any asset and will not give it up without a hard fight. Basically, it's their property unless you can prove otherwise and that usually means a costly legal battle.

Jim

The message from " snipped-for-privacy@hotmail.com" contains these words:

AIUI when administrators move in on a company, anything on the company premises is counted as an asset of the company, whether it's the 3-piece suite you've paid for but haven't had delivered, or a tradesman's tools left on the premises overnight. It would seem likely that the Airfix moulds are being counted as Heller's property, whether they are or not, and the administrators will release them (or not) when they're ready.

Or not. ;-)

If past US respect for history prevails don't look for a Lancaster kit, a B-17 kit would be more likely.

"Chris Wilson" wrote

Just as Airfix cashed in on the moulds of Rosebud Kitmaster and Dapol did on the Airfix moulds they acquired. If you ever buy the venerable 61XX Prairie tank (now getting distinctly soft round the edges from mould wear), look at the base plate under the bunker. You can clearly see the Airfix lozenge logo defaced by someone at Dapol running a router bit across it.

Brand is almost everything, but selling the right product at the right time is another. The trouble about static railway modelling items is that there isn't enough choice for it to be viable (compared with the infinite range of stuff the military boys have built up over the years, where narrative diorama rather than motion is the thing). If you buy something with a motor and turning wheels, you'd rather run it on the track than recreate the Salisbury Disaster or Cattle Market Day At Carnforth, which is what the military blokes would choose to assemble with the same materials but CKD in a packet as they're used to.

Also I wish in a way that exhibitions would encourage a static diorama category. Not only do you get something in a small space and of great historical aesthetic interest, but you might encourage modellers who don't have the time or confidence to wire up a fullsize layout, build scads of rolling stock and stand over it performing an operating timetable. They could just bring a box in and plonk it on a stand for people to admire. Most exhibition layouts, especially modern image, are s*** scenically, and the skills imbalance could do with evening up.

I've got a mental list of great scenes that would readily fill a box 2' cube and show something worthwhile of our railway heritage. Contractors' locos building the Manchester Ship Canal in 1894 is one, with one of those ginormous lock gates as the backdrop (cut-down Dapol Pug might do for that). Blasting Box Tunnel is another, a good crash another, the Great Central's viaducts in construction another, wartime bomb damage (plane across the line, wagons down the bank) another... sure, you could perhaps incorporate these in "proper" layouts but they'd impede the working side if the track is incomplete, especially the latter. Finescale railway modellers have cribbed a lot from the military modelling brigade over the years, and the youth interest seems to be in Warhammer 40000 and other fantasy games to which they will devote much impressive effort: time to find some common ground?

Tony Clarke

Tony Clarke wrote: [...]

Very good idea, I think.

BTW, NMRA has a diorama category: on-line (ie, a track runs through it) and off-line (no track) structures. Footprint is 12"x12". Very nice work, go to nmra.org and sniff around for photos of the NMRA convention(s).

HTH

Well it's Scaleforum next weekend and in my experience most of the layouts are dioramae (is that the plural?)

In message , John Bishop writes

No. The plural is "dioramas". In this country we speak English, not Latin, and in any case the word comes from the Greek, so the plural would be dioramata, and I don't think you want to go there.

Duck when you say that!

"John Bishop" wrote

It ought to be! I actually went to last year's Scaleforum specifically to find out what it is the the Scalefour Society does better than us EM boys. The answer seemed to be, very little. Certainly the scenic skills didn't impress: the trackwork and wheels might be to exact scale but a lot of perfunctory "that sort of thing" seemed to prevail on the lineside.

Their 1883 challenge (18.83 square feet layout area including fiddle yards, and one competitor even set it in 1883 - Burntisland, the feature layout in the latest MRJ) was a good idea, though I didn't take to the results such that any one was a runaway winner - but it suggests that limiting-factor competition incentivises the modeller of modest ambitions as well as the carper. Maybe one should just make dioramas and ask the local exhibition manager for a stall to display them. At least one can talk undividedly to the passing visitors instead of pretending to operate a schedule.

Now firmly midair with my own petard below me, I'd best get on with it

Tony Clarke