Unk Mfr - Tin Auto Laundry with Small Plastic Cars

These photos were taken in 2017 AND I found my 2017 notebook with all the toy photo annotations and there are no notes for this sucker!! Well don't that just beat all? Damn!

Okay fine. I came across this interesting little tin-litho auto laundry many years ago and the autos you see came with it. Are they the original autos? I have no clue, but their size is just right for the thing. Unfortunately, this is another case where I didn't have the foresight to do photo essays on each of these cars. The toy's roof is bent downward a bit but otherwise it's in okay shape. There is a band on the entrance ramp which then goes through the main structure. Once a car is placed on it, one turns the crank and the car moves forward on the band. The car is supposed to exit off the exit ramp automatically by simply sliding down it. In the absence of notes I guesstimate this to be about 12"L x 6"-7"W. I could go out in The Cave and measure it except that it's in a box buried under other boxes - and it's cold out there! 😂 Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Gas Tax Act Service Station Jack & Al's Standard Sevice - Pt 2 Conclusion

Well. I finally got around to building the Gas Tax Act Paper Service Station. Here's what ya get when you wake up at 5AM just so you can get a few hobby tasks done AND when you end up building kits on top of the wash machine in the garage! Actually. I was able to cut out the components at work during break times and the assembly was done atop an old piece of foam core plopped on the washer. Here's what I did:

1) Scanned the building components (two sets of walls, roof, awning/overhang)

2) Inserted scans into a Word doc

3) While in Word, I drew in tabs to aid with gluing (I've found that if tabs are omitted I occassionally cut the pieces right at the artwork's edge giving me no place to put the glue on! - DOH!)

4) Cut out the components

5) Braced the interior walls with stripwood - I use 3/16" square stripwood, it seems to be a good workable size for me

6) Glued on the roof

7) Braced the overhang with pump island as it was very flimsy. I ended up using a couple of different sizes of stripwood and had to do a little trimming to fit.

8) Glued the overhang in place on the roof.

Here's the original scans so you can make your own Service Station

There's an odd lean to the overhang

On the original, you can just see a crease below the front of the overhang in an attempt to make it look straight

I scored the cardstock just below the triangular front of the overhange and it helped to give a straighter appearance. You can see here some of the stripwood bracing - perhaps one day I'll paint the bracing, or not :-)

Here's a view of the bracing. My buildings tend to suffer the indignities of my rough handling and the bracing really does make them sturdy

While the scans were nice and bright (see the scans at the beginning of the post), the printed cardstock looked washed-out and weak looking so the finished product looks 'paler' than the original.

Littletown Model No. 108 Gas Station

Okay, here's everything I know about Littletown: they were a series of plastic buildings made in the 1950s by the Unlimited Plastics Corporation for use on toy train layouts. I believe somewhere along the line they entered into a partnership with Kleeware of England to have the kits produced over there as well. The box says 'scaled to model railroads', most likely an indirect reference to Lionel's O-gauge trains but they shared a similar size to Bachmann's Plasticville line and Marx's Marxville line. However, Marx was really more relevant to S-gauge trains as the doors were all a lot smaller than Littletown and Plasticville. One day I hope to show some comparison shots of the three lines. The gas station measures 7" (17.8cm) W x 3 5/8" (9.2cm) D x 3" (7.6cm) H. I really like the lines of this station with that curved bay window office area and stepped roof line. This is my first Littletown building and perhaps I'll be able to add a few more to the collection one day. Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

Beautiful artwork on a pop-up counter display box