New Project: Marx Street Shelf Display Pt 1

Okay, well, in between trying to sell things off and making room out in The Cave, and working on my aircraft runway shelf display, and taking photos of all kinds of different things, I started yet another project: Marx Street. I've been wanting some kind of small (and cheap) display just to photograph diecast or plastic cars and trucks on and have been batting ideas around in my head for some time. A few years back there was a major housecleaning out in The Cave and most of my plywood/particle board/Masonite/Styrofoam/1x2 & 2x4 wood stock were tossed. I kept a few things back - just in case. It was from this 'just in case' pile that I found this 33" (83.82cm) wide x 16" (40.64cm) deep piece of particle board. After pulling out a Marxville plastic Service Station, Diner, and Super Market it was clear something could be put together  without too much trouble.

To get the ball rolling I bought and cut up some 1"x 2" wood stock and framed up the piece of particle board. Then I bought two packages of Bar Mills No. 0684 O-Scale Sidewalk Kit. It's advertised as having 100' scale feet of sidewalk but as you can see by the photos, 100 scale feet doesn't really go that far and I had to buy another package. The streets were bought on eBay and sold by ScenerySheets.com. I purchased the intersection, streets with dashed white lines and a package of streets with green no-passing lines. Here you see the green striped streets and the trimmed down intersection piece. I ended up with a lot of extra street material and now am thinking about using that for the next iteration of my train layout.

Here's what I'm thinking of doing: there will be the three buildings seen here in full 3-D. They can be swapped out with other O-gauge toy buildings at will to change up the scene a little. The side of the street closest to the front edge will be populated with 'flats' - either plastic building fronts or cardboard, or pre-printed pictures (I haven't decided yet). After looking at some of Woodland Scenics 'Just Plug' line of light kits I may install some of those on the sidewalk. Then of course will be the myriad of tiny details which help bring any street scene to life. There will also be a backdrop behind the plastic buildings to help with the overall ambiance. All that being said, after starting this a few weeks ago I haven't gotten much farther than ordering a few more detail parts (this portion of the layout is now being used to clean, lube, and test my Marx engines for either eventual sale or to decide which ones are keepers). 

Thanx so much for your support my dear readers. Although the posts have slowed a tad there are still cool things in the works! As always - Enjoy! Opa Fritz and Oma Bettina

New Display Base

Yesterday I was busy trying to touch up rough spots on the Civil War Diorama/Display Base and while doin' that had the bright idea of building yet another display base (oh good grief, two projects at once when I'm having a hard enough time finishing one! LOL) Oh well, it's all good.

There was a piece of plywood just hangin' around The Cave for years waiting for...? Well, yesterday I decided to do somethin' with it. I also had a few sticks of scrap 1x2s (2.5cm x 5.1cm) laying around and within no time was able to quickly frame the plywood - which measures 32" (81.3cm) x 25" (63.5cm). A little extra time with paint, scenery material, and glue, and voilà - a new display base!Bettina & Fritz Berg  Enjoy!

Here the plywood has already been framed up

After having laid around for so long the plywood was dry and cracked. I gave it a good thick coat of flat interior latex paint.

The first coat dried fast. The second, darker coat was applied to ca 1/3 of the board and scenery material applied

2/3's of the base now has scenery applied and the water/glue mixture is still drying

The base is scenicked. 

I went over it several times with scenery and glue to cover up rough spots. The nice thing about the darker brown undercoat is, if any of the foam scenery material does come off it's not so noticeable.

Processed Plastics / MPC Rocket Ship

Today's post is actually somewhat of a mystery child.  In Mark Young's book "Blast Off!: Rockets, Ray Guns, Robots, and Rarities from the Golden Age of Space Toys" (Publisher, Dark Horse Comics, Inc, Milwaukee, WI - see links at right)  The rocket appears on page 104 and is credited as an Ajax toy.  Rusty Kern, editor of 'Playset Magazine' (see links at right) stated the toy was from Processed Plastics.  A photo of it appears in PM Magazine, issue #5, pg6 but appears to be attributed to Multiple Plastics Corp. (MPC).  Again there are no figures included and Rusty has stated there were none included regardless of Processed Plastics/MPC lineage.  Yet, the two astronauts pictured here seem to come with this toy in so many instances of it's eBay sales that they must have been included somewhere along the line.  My problem is, I bought these without their original packaging and cannot verify it one way or the other.  What we need here is to see one of these in the original packing to determine both company name and whether or not it came with figures.  The rocket itself is a colorful red, white, and blue soft plastic, with a lever actuated spring loaded projectile ('satellite') topping the rocket.  The rocket's first stage is surrounded by a red and white checkerboard peel-&-stick applique'.  The second stage has a 'USAF' peel-&-stick applique'.

The toy itself is rather unremarkable but because it had been around for so long is bound to bring old memories to the surface.  You can take even an unremarkable toy and give it a nice display using simple techniques and the one we show here is super simple to make and can be used in many space toy applications.  First, the base and background are nothing more than black foam core board cut down to size and you can size it to suit your needs.  The base is covered with a photo of the lunar surface downloaded from NASA's website, trimmed and glued to the foam core as is the photo of Saturn.  Here's the link to NASA:

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/image/

Although this display was made for temporary photography purposes you can 'beef' it up by gluing stripwood to the back to strengthen it and then gluing the back piece to the base.  Still, it's an easy project which can net great results.  Hope you enjoyed it!  Aufwiedersehen!

Flintstones, Meet The Flintstones...

 

This year marks the 50th Anniversary of The Flintstones, A Modern Stone Age Family.  50 Years!  Good grief, where has all the time gone?  It seems like only yesterday we were sitting at the TV watching the latest adventures of Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Betty.  The series ran from September 1960 until 1966.  Flintstones movies followed as did a series showing a teenage Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm.  Here's a link to an interesting website featuring '15 things you didn't know' - or perhaps you did.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/8034627/The-Flintstones-50th-anniversary-15-things-you-dont-know.html

Today's photos feature a simple display I made for Hannah-Barbera's  1/18th scale die-cast Flintmobile.  OK, first, how many of you collector's out there just plop your collectible's on a shelf and call it a day?  Just about everyone I guess, including me.  But every now and then you have to do something to liven up your displays.  This is a very simple diorama that requires no special skill set.  

The base is made from Styrofoam cut into a square using a simple serrated kitchen knife.  Further cutting and forming was made using smaller knives.  The look and feel for the landscape came from spending a nice Saturday afternoon watching Flintstones DVD's and making a few sketches.  First, the car is the showpiece and needs to be up front.  It was placed at a slight angle for a better visual composition.  The road it sits on is slightly peaked for two reasons: it gives a nice up-and- down country road feel; and the peak allows the car to sit on the road without rolling off.  The colors on the base are all basic browns and greens - strong cartoon quality colors.  The perimeter of the base is painted black to better highlight the cartoon color qualities of the rest of the display.  The rocks are small landscape rocks from a neighbor's yard (he had just gotten a whole pile delivered for his landscaping project when I asked if I could have a couple of handfuls - he gave me a funny look like I was crazy!).  The house is one half of a plastic Flintstones house from an original Marx Flintstones playset with a piece of black construction paper taped in the window.  The tree and fern are also from the playset.   The backdrop, which was actually made longer than the base for adequate photography, is just foam core board cut down and painted.  Watching the cartoon gave me a good feel for how the backdrop scenery was executed in the show. 

It was a fun project to build and didn't take that long to accomplish.  It makes a great display for a fun subject.  Hope you enjoyed it!