The Little World

Over the last seven years, Walter I’ve seen a division of the Little World grow right before my eyes. I have only been a spectator but even so I am very impressed with it. it’s the business of radio-controlled trucking and transport.

The R/C chaps have always had some sort of display at the various model car shows here in Perth. Initially they ran their rigs out on a car park – sometimes in the rain at the winter display. There are clubs throughout the state that gather to do this sort of modelling and they run competitions for themselves – both for building and operating. They should also have a prize division for ingenuity as they have made some of the best accessories I’ve ever seen.

The Model Car Spectacular was held in a school hall – the R/C truckies took up fully half of the floor space and made a magnificent layout in one day. The components are all pre-fab and they can lay them out in any number of configurations. They set themselves problems of curved roads, bridges, inclines. freight docks, and loading facilities. The wild thing is the loading facilities actually work!

I spent the better part of 15 minutes watching one enthusiast using a backhoe to load plastic coal into a conveyor hopper that dumped it into another chap’s trailer for carting away. Every movement they made was controlled by themselves with their radio sets and they had to be as good as full-sized heavy machinery operators to do it. I think my late father would have gone into this hobby in a big way were he alive – he was a heavy earthmoving machine operator in his youth.

I did not ask the big question of anyone…ie, how much does one of the trucks or diggers cost…because the answer would have been discouraging. The maintenance on the rigs would also be time-consuming…but that is the beauty of the Little World when done right – it can become as much reality as you care to make it.

And yes, Walter, I do want to have a play with the diggers. I’m like you. I’m even prepared to make Rrrrumm-rrrumm noises, though I noticed that some of the trucks have a sound system anyway.