The Little World

I just figured out why I like my model airfields so much. They are the best play set I’ve ever had.

The Louis Marx company play sets that appeared in so many North American Christmas catalogues in the 50’s were wonderful things. You could get Fort Apache, The Alamo, The Army Camp, Cape Canaveral, Cops and Robbers, and many more boxed slices of plastic life. I have no idea what the scale was, and there were enough out of scale components to give a purist the horrors, but we loved them.

You could play indoors all afternoon in the midst of an Alberta blizzard and never be bored. Of course you had to expect to lose a few accessories and figures from time to time down the hot air registers that went to the furnace flues but we accepted this.

My air fields are closer to scale than the old Marx sets, though I do have to admit to the occasional necessary flaw; there’s a control tower and three hangars that started out as putative “O” gauge in the 50’s ( But I suspect they are closer to “S” gauge ) and a few vehicles are 1/64 rather than 1/76 but I have my eyes open to replace them eventually. And I make no bones about the 1/72 – 1/76 scale issue between aircraft kits and OO scale vehicles and structures. 4% of anything is too small for me to see at my age.

I’m also happy to say that the model railway people who build even better play sets that I are also willing to adjust scales when they combine 1/87 with 1:76 and even mix in 1/160 for items that are at the back of a layout. They quite rightly realise that the disparity in size makes for an illusion of distance – a valuable thing to be able to model.

I use the excuse that the airfields are a prop for studio photography – and I do go and spend afternoons doing just that. I set up scenarios with the planes and vehicles and try for the most realism that I can produce with the angles and lighting. Then I Photoshop skies into the resultant files and share them with like-minded enthusiasts on the internet. It is all very artistic and adult and whatever.

But I’ll let you into a secret…I’m still playing through those long afternoons as I did 60 years ago. I’ve just substituted air conditioning in the Australian summer for central heating in the Canadian winter. I don’t lose parts down the hot-air register…though they can disappear round the back of the bookcases occasionally.

The other big thing is I am not restricted to one new toy per year at Christmas. I can steam out whenever the fit takes me and get another bit for the layout. I do exercise caution and frugal behaviour but not all the time…