Innocent Times Revisited - part 2

These Lego cars were sold as being in the H0 scale of 1/87. Compared to other makes, Wiking for example, they tend to be a tad larger, so possibly 1/80 or 1/76 perhaps. But they were still very useful for a model train layout; something which Lego also suggested in an early ideas book which featured an earlier town plan with an H0 model railway running round it, over bridges and past buildings made out of Lego (See scans on Brick Fetish - there are minute links at the bottom of the pages to see the rest of that book; the entire site is very much recommended).

The train track is overdoing it a bit to my taste, so I'm contenting myself with just having some contemporary buildings, based on various sources. [click on photos for larger view]

The front cover of the town plan shows some buildings that I've also built. Incidentally, the boy playing with the Bedford truck is a young Kjeld Kirk Kristiansen, the grandson of Lego Founder Ole Kirk Christiansen and the man who was CEO and Chairman of the company until 2004 (his last name starts with a K due to a clerical error when he was born apparently).

The back of the townplan shows other buildings, some of which were available as sets at the time. I've built a few of those to go with my townplan as well. The iconic Esso service station I initially built from loose parts, but then I found a glued-together display model at a swapmeet, made from all the correct parts including the special plates trimmed in red.

When this town plan period started, Lego was made from cellulose acetate. Which has a lovely slightly translucent shine to it, as opposed to the dense colours of the ABS plastic that came in from 1963. But it has less clutch power (as Lego calls it) which when young we countered by clamping a sheet of paper between the bricks and tearing off the excess (a trick I've used again f ex in the aerial on the fire station roof).

Its other disadvantage is that it can (and most often does) warp over time, making larger bricks completely useless. The white flatbed trailers made from cellulose acetate are very likely to be twisted into weird shapes (much worse than the relatively unaffected ones shown), and most Mercedes convertibles and removal trucks go somewhat banana-shaped as well. 

The Bedford trucks (and passenger cars) were issued in ABS plastic before the Bedfords were replaced with Mercedes trucks. But for sheer period nostalgia, the bright shine of cellulose acetate is hard to beat.

A first version of this post was published on Moonbase Central.