BREWERIANA: Lionel #6-9106 O-gauge Miller Lite Vat Carrier 1984

Let's look at another O-gauge railroad train car for our breweriana series: the Miller Lite Vat Carrier from Lionel's MPC era in 1984. Occasionally I'll pull out all my beer cars, or perhaps cars labeled for various candies or treats, and run 'unit' trains. They're fun to watch and, needless to say, very colorful. As far as I know there's not too many vat cars featuring beer labels out there in the 3-rail world, but I seem to recall a Budweiser vat car (but don't quote me on that). Beer companies tend to show up in refrigerator cars (reefers) much more than they do vat cars. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Battle For Fort Treasure - Pt 2 Final

After looking at the photos of this set-up I'm thinking to myself, "Meh" LOL I enjoyed messing around with the toys but at the same time the photos aren't what I'd hoped. But that's okay - this is the first time ever on the blog that a sea-born battle was waged and photographed. I'm going to need a different base with a bit more realistic looking water (not just a platform painted a flat sky blue) and different backdrops for more effective photography. That being said, here's the remaining pics from the photo shoot of Tim-Mee's Pirate Fortress Playset. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The fort rests on a piece of green poster board simulating an island. Good 'nuff for playing but lousy for photography. I have a bunch of playset forts and castles in the collection as well as random sheets of Styrofoam laying around. I really need to take a look at what I can make for a proper castle/fort base

The smaller 45mm Tim-Mee figures look much better with the MPC boats than the MPC 60mm ringhands which would normally have come with them

The original MPC boats are colorful and toy like, whereas the repop's are brown or rust colored

A bird's eye view of the set-up. This table will be used for my Halloween and then Christmas train layouts in the coming weeks, but it needs more panels for the backdrop. I could also use some more landforms if I'm gonna do set-ups like these.

You can see that a plain, flat sky blue painted 'water' isn't all that great, but it's a step in the right direction.

The fort is about the same size as some of the Marx Fort Apache stockades. The 'island' took up the entire size of the green poster board and appears to be a decent size for it however, some of my castles are a bit wider and will need a larger base if I ever get around to making one.

BREWERIANA: Kapaun AS, GE Kissling NCO Academy Beer Stein 1989

While stationed in Germany, I lucked out when it came my time to attend the NCO academy as it was only about a 30 minute drive up the road from our house at Kapaun AS. Here is the souvenir beer stein from my time there. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Battle For Fort Treasure - Pt 1

It's the dawn of a new day and competing bands of pirates have begun to fight over turf and supremacy in the region! A fleet of ships have pulled up to Fort Treasure and have begun the fight!

This was a fun little set-up and it was up and played with for several days before taking down. I gathered most all of my MPC ships - repo and original - assembled the Tim-Mee Fort Treasure and used only the figures that came in the Tim-Mee playset. And, being smaller than MPC ringhand pirates, they actually look much better in the MPC ships. This was all about playing with toys and taking a few pics showing how you can mix and match toys from different companies and era's in a fun way. A few more pics tomorrow of this little skirmish and then we move on. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

BREWERIANA: 'W' - .5l Freistaat Bayern (Free State Bavaria) Ceramic Bier Krug / Beer Stein

Here's a nice little souvenir from our travels in Bavaria. It's mad by a company who's hallmark is 'W', but I can't find the name of the firm on-line. I had a bad habit when photographing these of not always remembering to take a picture of the bottom which would show any hallmarks. I'm glad I wrote it down at least. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Oak Island Treasure: A New Playing Field and Burying Pirate Booty - Pt 2 B&W

Occasionally, I do like trying to plus-up my photos as best as my meager abilities will allow. So given that, I thought about yesterday's post and came up with this 'what if?' scenario. What if the pirates buried their treasure at night? How would that look? To that end a couple of the color pictures were given a dash of Photoshopping and now the whole scenario plays out at night. Hope you - Enjoy! Opa Fritz

BREWERIANA: BMF German Pewter Wine Decanter

I originally posted this BMF pewter wine decanter back in 2015, but at that time I had no photographs of the box - just the decanter. So here we have the whole shebang and it makes a nice compliment to the SKS stein and goblet posted earlier. The scenes on this example are from "Alt Heidelberg" (Old Heidelberg) Enjoy! Opa Fritz

PIRATES: Oak Island Treasure: A New Playing Field and Burying Pirate Booty - Pt 1

By God, if I don't start getting out the toys and play ima gonna burst!

The Cave - which I'll be calling The Room of Requirements cuz that's what it reminds me of - is no longer suitable for setting up my playsets or toys and messing with them. Why? Wellll, my Milwaukee North Western train layout has pretty much become a permanent thing as it is now a permanent fixture on the board I used to use for setting up playsets and toys. Although I haven't posted much about it lately, trust me, it's seen a lot of activity this year! Fun stuff too: locos, and  sets I haven't run in years, Hershey's trains, and M&M's trains, and lots of other trains have all been running the tracks. Currently there's an M&M's train and a nice consist of Menard's flat cars running the two loops.

So, what'll I do now? Well I figured that the 4'x6' board set up in the living room and used for last year's Christmas layout might as well be put to use a bit early. Only now, it's been placed on folding metal saw horses to raise it up some. Part of what drove this was my grand daughter asking me if I was going to do a Halloween set-up. And as I said earlier, the layout in the garage is getting harder and harder to swap themes. Also, she just doesn't like going out in The Room of Requirements all that much. It was logical to set the board up and use it for as many activities as I could fit in. We don't get company over to the house except for my grand daughter's friends so moving the couch to another wall to accommodate the board is no biggie. As a fatter-of-mact, I may even get rid of one of the couches to make room for other stuff!

Eventually I want to add some skirting to the table, but this how it is for now. The table was painted the same blue I used for the train layout backdrops. This way I can use it to stage boats on as you'll see in the upcoming photos.

Oak Island Treasure

And now to the point of the post. For my first set-up, it was a no-brainer to grab some of the pirate toys featured lately here on the blog. I pulled out a few of the Marx repop figures, the rowboat from the Haunted Hull set, and an MPC treasure chest and placed them on some of my leftover train layout scenery pieces. I have about four of five of these which come in awfully handy when setting up toys. The inspiration for the posts' title came of course from the History channel's "The Curse of Oak Island". I've enjoyed watching that show - albeit on an on-again/off-again basis - for years now. Pirates burying treasure is a time honored theme and the figures that come in all these sets are perfect for it. To that end - Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Here's the basic set-up. A couple of landforms, and some figures. I used sky blue foamcore board as a backdrop for now until I can get something a bit more permanent. BTW, the color rendition on my camera sucks. It doesn't like the color blue and more often than not, makes it appear gray.

That iguana to the far left came in a job lot of pirates and I like it - it makes a nice addition to these scenes

I don't know what that poor guy did to deserve this but I'm fairly certain he won't survive this!

Personally, this is my favorite shot. What do you think guys?