O scale Motor Chronicle Sept. 12

Thanks Richard E.  I like that Lincoln Capri but I've bought too many of those heavy lunks of metal for now.  

I do have the NEO Jeep pickup  - just got it. It is a nice little model at a decent price and a perfect match for the NEO Jeep station wagon.   

One of your previous posts caused me to shop for a buy this '56 Pontiac station wagon, which just arrived.  The interior, as you can see, is a garish red.  I will remove it later this morning and paint it lite blue or something more realistic. 

And a previous thread brought up ISOs - and I broke down and ordered these two - some of my favorite cars.  I'd love to have these both in 1:1 if I had a place to keep them.  

I love these threads and look forward to them each week. 

I also thoroughly enjoy this thread each week.

One of my favorite Divco's.

Some how I've not read your post on this subject before. I will no add it to my looking forward to this posts. Some great cars I love station wagons they remind me of my youth.

Dave

As do I.

My problem with modelling the WW2 era in a very rural setting is that it rules out a huge amount of the decent scale car models out there. I can't justify the higher-end cars because East Tennessee mountain folks wouldn't have even seen cars like that, let alone own them. And anything later than 1941 is out for obvious historical reasons.

Doesn't mean I still don't like looking at all the stuff there is out there, though.

WWII is a problem with regard to non-military vehicles, although there seems to be a surfeit of battlefield equipment available in 1:50.  But on that big website named after a giant river in South America, I picked up a really nice Rextoys 1940 Packard recently for around $20 - I realize they were probably pretty rare in East Tennesse to during the war but the period is right and its a really good model, and I also got a nice White Box '37 Ford sedan for around the same price.  One other thing to think about is: sometimes inexpensive models of European pre-War cars look enough like American cars of the period to pass muster.  Some mid-30s European Fords and Opels look nearly identical to American models of the time.  You occasionally see them are steep discounts over here.  There is the reseller on that big site that sells for only $10 - $12.  Type in "1:43 Amer Hobby" into the toys and Game section's search and you get them exclusively.  They sell a few cars that would serve, and its cheap as long as you order a bunch: ships from Germany and shipping is about the same for one car as for six, so . . . 

And of course, I realize you have a 1:1 model ot this, but there it can be nice to see yourself on your own layout:

http://www.amazon.com/Jeep-Wil...keywords=1%3A43+Jeep

And this:

http://www.amazon.com/IXO-Diec...keywords=1%3A43+Jeep 

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On a separate note, I repainted the interior of that Brooklin Models '56 Chieftain station wagon.  Seldom have I seen anything so simple so much to transform a model.  Wow!  Before the model looked toy-like and boring - just underwhelming.  Now it is a jewel - it looks detailed and authentic.  Not that it matters but I looked up images of the interior of '56 Pontiacs to get an idea for my painting, including the door handles, etc.  I also painted the red license plate a muted green to tone down the eyes' distraction with it.  This is now a very good model that will go in a very prominent place.  An orange-red interior?  What were they thinking at Brooklin?

I really like that Willys Jeep pick-up.

Lee, I have several of the Rextoys 40 packards and they really are nice cars.

I have a few Jeeps, but the area I'm modeling is in a very rural valley area. There wouldn't be a massive military presence there (the TN Maneuvers did have the 101st Airborne paratrooper and glider units fly over this valley in the timeframe I'm modeling, as my Dad lived there as a kid and remembers seeing them go over), but other than the 3 GCCW 2 1/2 ton trucks I've modified and painted/weathered, I'm not going nuts with turning the valley into an Army camp. I can't even use tractors for a corner of a farm I'll be installing soon onto the layout because I've confirmed with my parents (who were both little kids there at the time) that nobody owned a tractor there during the war.

Really, modeling WW2 gives you an excuse to not go bonkers with scale car models, anyway. It's just that I see some of these really cool models and think, "Man, I like that but it wouldn't fit on the layout at all," way too often.

I have enough civilian vehicles for the layout already, the latest is a 1941 pickup truck (which isn't weathered nearly as bad as the rest of the vehicles, all 30s stuff).

I wish they made that '30 Packard in a closed version, although large luxury cars

were not common in small towns, and not open ones.  Duesenberg models kind of crsck me up, as there are many times more models than of the few cars made, in spite of

their high survival rate.  I was in the Deer Lodge, Montana car miseum (yeah, who 

knew?) and they had a very good collection from 1903 to the 1960's....including about

six '57 Chevies that a friend of mine would drool all over.

That's pretty nice they did the 1965 Buick Sportwagon. The Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser seemed to be more common -- at least out here in California. Surprised they didn't do that one. Might pick one up anyway. Those wagons seemed like GM's subtle homage to the Super Scenicruiser Bus they made for Greyhound.

Love this thread.

My doctor, back when I was a kid, and they did housecalls, drove a Packard, so that

Rextoy would be appropriate for that, or parked outside a large industry as

"management" transportation.

I went to a HO modular layout set up yesterday and was struck by how small their cars are compared to our 1:43. I'm pretty new to 1:43 collecting and it seems like it would take 4 HO cars end to end to equal one of our cars. Thats a lot smaller than half O. Yet their cars looked appropriate size for HO scale. They were so small that their wasn't much to them as far as collecting them but collecting 1:43 is kind of a offshoot to O gauge for me and many others. I realize that 1:43 is a little big but not that big, whats going on here?

Nice selection, this week, Richard.  But for my layout, as I probably mentioned once too often, 1950 is the newer limit of my auto selections.   Now, I know that the Duesey and the Packard are both within that time frame, but I already have a couple of those earlier, open, luxury cars, and, in reality, you really didn't see them on the streets, very often. 

I'd like to see an economical offering of a bathtub Nash, 1949 or 1950, maybe a Hudson or Studebaker, by someone else than Brooklin.  Sure, I like their products but I just don't have a lot of extra $140 bucks lying around for automobile models for the layout.

Which does beg a question:  How many of you guys would consider yourselves model car collectors, versus train guys that want a variety of autos to "populate" your layouts?  I, for one, pride myself on having about 175 1/43 car models and 1/50 truck and construction equipment models.  However, their purpose is to give meaning to the HiRail layout, adding interest and helping to define the year and setting of the layout itself.  Oh sure, I have a few 1/18 and some 1/24 car models around my office and our upstairs hallway, but these are primarily vehicles that I can associate with from my youth.  But I have seen large collections of auto models, strictly on display, not necessarily a part of a train layout scene.  How many of you fall into this category?

Paul Fischer

Campaired to 1/48,  HO vehicles are about half as long,half as wide and half as high but 1/8 the mass.  British O scale 1/43 models are about 10% to large.

IXO makes a 50 Nash Police car and a civilian sedan.

It is hard to know where the one ends and the other begins, but I suppose I have a foot on each side, with the evidence pointing to collecting and displaying more . . . .

I started out buying 1:43 cars (only that scale for cars) and 1:50 trucks and big equipment only so I could put them on the layout.  My time-period cutoff was 1955, not far from your  1950, and I found a lot of stuff from the 30s, 40s, and first half of the 50s that would go on the layout.  I have about 140 cars there, all but a few in that time period.

But over time I had three trends in my buying:

1.  I moved up in quality from the $7 to $12 New Ray and similar models - they gave way to American Excellence, IXO, Brumm, Bizarre, Vitesse, and NEO, etc.  I have a few Brooklins, but you have to be careful.  Some are jewels, some are not.  
2.  I branched out in time.  I have about six dozen Ferraris and Italian, English and American sports cars - initially from the 50s but then into the 60s and 70s, and 40s and 30s . . . I have a set of sixteen land speed record cars of all periods.  These I collect just because . . . .  I thought some NEO and American Excellence cars from the 60s looked sooooo good, I just bought them because . . . now I even stray into the 70s.  These occupy more shelf space than I can really devote to them but . . .  
3. Now I deliberately buy two other time periods - sort of for the layout.  It is a blast to change out all the cars on the layout, removing all the 1955 set (a few cars going back to the 30s of course, but nothing newer than '55, most from 45-52) and put in cars going back only to 1950 up to 1969 instead.  That and a few billboards changes the time period overnight to the Beatles era!  I'm working on a big enough set that would cut off at 1940 now - all pre-war - to go in the opposite direction in my time machine.  

I have the IXO Hudson, maybe the ugliest car on my layout with the possible exception of a Brooklin '54 Nash.  Mine is a bit shopworn.  I converted it to 'Streets and I run it most days.  It's lost the Police emblems on the sides from being picked up so often and its lights from I don't know what, but its a cool looking car in its own way.

That is just so cool.

I'm glad I have tightly focused my purchases for things like this which excludes this one, as otherwise I'd put far more money into model cars than I should...

I look forward to this post every week! I just got a '58 Buick Special convertible in aqua blue and a dark green '49 Ford 2 door sedan w/fender skirts from Die-cast.

I also have a '59 Plymouth Savoy hardtop on backorder from them. I also model only up to the late '50s but I could probably get by with early 60's. As Lee W. once said, it gets addictive!

Speaking of HO cars, and I said something about them on here, to the effect that

what really yanked my chain at the Cleveland NMRA show, were all the Pre-1940

cars available from somebody in Canada, and, not all 1940 Fords, but a whole lot

of Chevrolet coupes, sedans, pickups of various years.  seems like there were

a variety of other makes in his catalog, but no air valves underneath to blow them up with. 

That Nash of Lee's is so neat!  I grew up in Milwaukee where Nash bodies were made and then shipped to Kenosha to receive their engines and running gear to become completed cars.  Nashes at that time were unit body and frame, the first cars so built, except for that Nash Ambassador that is on the photo, which had an additional sub-frame to handle the extra length and more power of the Ambassador.

That car used an over head valve six of some 115 HP which was a lot in those days before the HP race started in the late 1950's.  It was a good engine and in 1951 Nash added dual side draft carburetors and rated it at 125 HP.  One of those cars set the land speed record for stock cars at 103 MPH, which did not last too many years as a record.

Gotta get one of those for my layout.  I really liked that "bathtub" Nash and would certainly enjoy owning a real one these days.

Paul Fischer

When I was a kid, one of my buddies dad owned one. It was as quiet and comfortable as any car on the road. In the late '70s my wife had a AMC Pacer ( another oddly styled car) with that same basic 7 main bearing 6, the engine was as smooth as silk.