It's A Small World After All: Wrapping Up The Series

I think I'm gonna call it a wrap on this 'It's A Small World' series which has been running now since Dec 7, 2023 - a good run for the blog. There are still things out in The Cave that remain to be photographed (if I can find them), and things I've already sold off that never got photographed. This last portion of the series dealt with Marx HO scale buildings and accessories. Marx introduced their buildings and accessories before they introduced the actual HO scale trains. In the 1952 Sears Christmas Wishbook, Marx offered the #6552 "Guid-A-Traffic" set which included several buildings, figures, and scenery pieces all in hard styrene plastic, plus a too-large-for HO scale windup car. In that same catalog, a few pages away, Marx packaged buildings, figures, scenery items, and smaller sized vehicles in their 'Paint-A-Village-set. The set also included a small, non-functioning train set along with a set of paints and a brush for youngsters to decorate their village. Fast forward to 1961 and the same buildings offered nine years earlier could be found on a ready-made layout board which included an HO scale train, buildings, figures, etc. 

After years of collecting Marx HO scale buildings and think maybe I would get back into the scale after many years being absent from it, I decided to throw in the towel. I kept the Guid-A-Traffic set as well as some odds-&-ends and sold the rest. However, prior to getting rid of them, I placed them in a set-up to photograph them, the results of which are shown below. I'll have a couple of straggler pieces that didn't quite fit into this series that I'll post in the next day or so. AND, should I find any more HO stuff, I'll get those photographed and posted as well. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

1952 Sears Wishbook

Also 1952 Sears Wishbook

1961 Sears Wishbook featuring ready-built HO scale layout boards complete with an HO scale train and buildings. This was the only catalog I could find that showed these ready-made boards. I couldn't find them in any other year, nor were they in any of the Wards Christmas wishbooks that I have. Mind you, back in the day consumer's had a pretty good choice of Christmas catalogs to choose from: JC Penney, Spiegel, Lord & Taylor, Montgomery Wards, Simpson-Sears (Canada), Sears, Western Auto and there were probably more. It could be that Marx layouts were featured in other catalogs that I don't have. 

Here's the set-up featuring all the buildings in the series as well as the figures, vehicles, etc. A few things shown didn't get posted because the photos turned out bad and the item was sold off already. Other things - like the train - I thought were photographed but...?

I really thought I photographed this train - and maybe the pics are somewhere on my hard drive, but I haven't been able to find them yet.