Triang SpaceX 25mm Astronauts: Figures 3 & 4

As I was taking the photos, I tried to imagine what each astronaut was carrying. It's apparent that some are carrying firearm's like in today's two figures, while other's are carrying canisters, and bags or cases. Then there's this guy below: is he holding a sextant?? Oh well, you tell me :-) Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Figure 3

 

Figure 4

Is that a pistol? Is he gaurding the payroll for this week? LOL

Playset Magazine and My Old 'Marxville and Plateau' Train Layout

I've gotten into the bad habit of setting aside my magazines for reading 'later'. Unfortunately, sometimes 'later' turns out to be months later. Why is that do you s'pose? I do plenty of on-line reading, why don't I set aside time for print reading. Heck, I used to devour magazines and books at one time and now? Wellll, now I.don't. Oh hell, I'll set aside some self-analyses time for - (you guessed it) LATER! LOL

Anywho, my issue of Playset magazine came in and sat on the kitchen table for a couple of weeks when one of my fb buds posted the article in one of the toy groups with a shout-out to me! Boy, was I surprised hahahaha. At one time I was getting upwards of a couple of dozen magazines here in the house every month - and I read all of them. There were hobby mags, home improvement mags, general knowledge mags like The Smithsonian, history mags, all kinds of stuff. Many were subscription and many were simply bought off store magazine racks. I guess it was reading burnout which caused me to just suddenly stop eveything. HOWEVER, I am a charter subscriber to Playset and it was the only mag I've continued with until recently when I re-subscribed to Classic Toy Trains (CTT) after a long hiatus.

The article features my T. Cohn Navy Base as it was set up on The Marxville and Plateau (The MaP). There've been quite a few posts on The MaP here on Toys and Stuff and sadly I felt the need to dismantle the layout back in 2016. A part of me says that was a mistake, but a part of me says that one day there will be a better layout to take its place. We shall see, we shall see. This isn't the first time Playset has featured my photos but this one took me by surprise because I totally forgot these photos were submitted LOL Anywho, Thank You Rusty and Kathy Kern for your interest and more photos of toys and playsets are on their way! BTW, if you don't already, I would highly recommend subscribing to Playset magazine. It is really the only resource playset collector's have left here in the States and it needs our support! Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Vegas Valley Big Sky Pics - Dust In The Wind: The Sahara Dust Storm and Mahogany Grove Fire

Unless you've been living in a bubble, you've may at least heard of the huge dust storm or cloud blowing from the Sahara and affecting nearly all of North America. While Nevada is on the far west fringe of that dust cloud we're still seeing it's effects in hazy sky's and health alerts for people with respiratory problems. BUT, as if that wasn't enough, we now have to conted with...

...The Mahogany Grove Fire! Named after the Mahogany Grove Campground up on Mount Charleston, the blaze has burned more than 5000 acres up on the mountain. We first learned of it by stickin' our head out the back door and seeing and eerie darkish sky coming from the direction of Mount Charleston. By sunset it was providing Bettina with some awesome photo ops, but later in the eveing we learned of evacuations for those living up there! For them it is not a photo op and we hope all are safe - there's enough missery in the world without having to contend with this.  Pictures by Bettina. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

****UPDATE****

Due to more accurate mapping, the fire has been downsized from 5000+ acres to 3000+ acres

5:01PM

At this point, from our vantage point it looked like a structure fire across the Valley

By 7:30PM it was clear it wasn't a structure fire

8:26PM

8:29PM

8:45PM

8:51PM

8:56PM

8:54PM

Triang SpaceX 25mm Astronauts: Figures 1 & 2

Okay, I did say that once the four series of Triang's Stage I SpaceX toys was posted I would start posting the figures. Apparently, after reading Paul Vreede's excellent coverage of these toys in his SpaceX Central website, the figures themselves were actually sourced from LP. LP made the 'Apollo Moon Exploring' series of spaceships and rockets which were perfect adjuncts to the SpaceX line. None of my figures are marked on the bottom as to manufacturer. There were at least 13 different sculpts from what I could piece together with all my sets, and this includes both Triang branded and Golden Astronaut branded sets. These figures are small - 25mm - and quite frankly they have been a real bear to photograph. In some instances I must've taken a dozen photos of a particular stance only to come up with a crappy photo! It is what it is and I'll post the better of the photos but even so you'll notice that at times the entire figure may not be in focus - this is especially true of the those shots taken from above the figure rather than at eye-level. To that end - Enjoy! Opa Fritz

As with all the other figures I post here on the blog, these are labeled Figure 1, 2, 3 etc. Absolutely no attempt to organize them other than that

Figure 1

Figure 2