Marx 34 Pc Village and Construction Set - Bus Shelter

We're going to continue where we left off with the 34pc Marx Construction Village. The series was interrupted for the Olympics but we'll slowly but surely get on track with things. Today let's look at the Bus Shelter, something every fair sized community with bus service needs. Back in the day shelters were simple wood constructs but today they're often times sleek modern affairs. As a fatter of mact, right here near my house in Las Vegas, the bus shelters for the Express buses are futuristic looking affairs - very sleek and modern looking. Actually they're really neat lookin'!

Now remember that the scans for these buildings were originally posted back in early 2011, shortly after I started this blog. At that time I was still feeling my way around this whole blogging thing and simply never assembled or photographed the buildings. To view the scans for this shelter from Mar 17, 2011 go here: Bus Shelter scans

The shelter measures 2 1/5" (6.4cm) W x 1 1/8" (3.5cm) D x 2 1/8" (6cm) H

I've had questions from several readers about how to print these out or if they're scaled to any particular modeling size like HO or O, or if they were designed for 8 1/5" x 11" or A4 size paper stock, or whatever. The short answer is: Nope

Here's the thing. I get all these paper buildings, plop 'em on the scanner, clean up the scans some and post 'em. I really haven't tried to turn the scans into the equivalent of scale model kits. As busy as I am with things in general, doing that extra work just isn't possible at the moment. HOWEVER, it's actually a darn good idea and maybe I need to slowly, but surely, try my hand at it. I've seen paper model templates offered as .jpeg files or .PDF files and for our purposes it's probably best to do them as .jpeg's as I can't upload .PDF's in blogger. Anywho, it's something to think about for future posts. For today though let's take a look at this bus shelter - Enjoy!

Marx Big Inch Pipeline / Construction Camp Quonset Hut

According to Wikipedia: "A Quonset hut is a lightweight prefabricated structure of corrugated galvanized steel having a semicircular cross section. The design was based on the Nissen hutdeveloped by the British during World War I. The name comes from their site of first manufacture, Quonset Point, at the Davisville Naval Construction Battalion Centerin Davisville (a village located within the town of North Kingstown, Rhode Island, USA)"

Wikipedia Quonset Hut Reference

In 1963 Marx introduced it's Quonset hut as part of the Big Inch Pipeline construction playset. For those mother's not wanting to buy their children war themed toys, farm and construction playsets offered a a viable alternative. The construction sets had plenty of play value with cranes, bulldozers, earth movers, scrapers and other equipment loaded with working features. Add to that the generous amount of figures in various poses and ancillary tools and equipment and you've got a terrific, fun filled activity for the younguns! While Marx tended to get the most out of their tooling, the Quonset hut only appeared in construction sets and the "I.G.Y." (International Geophysical Year) playset featuring the Arctic Satellite Base. This despite the fact that the military used these extensively and that Marx had always featured military themed playsets as part of its toy line-up. As a result, this tends to be a slightly harder Marx tin building to find and generally commands higher prices than more common pieces. Enjoy!