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

T. Cohn Naval Base Playset

This week we've been featuring parts and pieces from the T. Cohn Naval Base playset and today we put it all together. There is a caveat though, in that I don't have a complete set. There are at least two fence pieces missing, none of the figures are here, some of the detail parts are gone, and the box is AWOL!. However, there's enough here to still make a really nice set-up. 

The playset consists of two main elements;

1) The tin-litho compound base (22"L x 12 3/8" W x 1" H) comprised of the warehouse, huge dock crane and staging area all of which would normally be enclosed by soft plastic fence pieces.

2) The docks consisting of: a paper seawater mat (22" L x 12" W); four tin-litho piers; and three ships (destroyer, aircraft carrier, freighter)

The overall height fro the bottom of the base to the top of the crane is 14 1/4"

I decided to just plaster a whole bunch of photos from a variety of angles so you can get a feel for what this thing looks like. Enjoy!

You'll notice I forgot to attach the masts on the Freighter when I took these shots - oops!

T. Cohn Naval Base Ships

Yesterday we looked at the vehicles which came with the T. Cohn Naval Base playset. Today we'll look at the ships of which there were three, a destroyer, an aircraft carrier, and a freighter. All three ships have wheels underneath allowing them to be rolled across the floor. Like so many old toys some of my stuff has issues as you'll see when looking at the photos. Enjoy!

My destroyer has been torpedoed!

Besides the big hole in the hull, there are some deck portions broken as well as some missing pieces.

Measures: 9 1/2" L x 2 1/8" H x 1 7/8" W

Aircraft carrier. Measures: 9 5/8" L x 2 1/4" H x 2 5/8" W

Freighter

Missing a couple of deck cranes

Measures: 9 1/4" L x 2 1/2" H x 2 7/8" W