The Little World

And so were the manufacturers of scale models who conducted their businesses out of them, it would appear. And we didn’t realise it…

I am not going to mention big names here. Revell, Monogram, Aurora, Lindberg, Airfix, Tamiya, etc. Their local representatives can breathe out again and put the axe back on the table – they are not what raised the title speculation in my mind.

What did was a plastic-bagged kit from Ratio that I picked up from a hobby shop. Not my regular – an out-of-the-way place with shelves full of old stock. Normally a good thing to discover, this proved to be something of a curate’s egg. And no more so than with the Ratio OO accessories.

I wanted oil tanks for Wet Dog Regional and for Ess-Bend Aviation. The Ratio ones were about the same price as 6 Walthers HO tanks but these would have been a little large for the position – I am using N guage Walthers tanks in the Ess-Bend shop as internal storage for lubricants and cleaning solvents.

But what a difference in the quality…The Walthers are just as much a specialist  product from a small moulder but they were free of flash, well-packed, and bore evidence of careful mould machining. The Ratio tanks inside are frankly a mess – and they show all the inaccuracies of internal diameter and mould as the worst of the eastern European small kits. They’ve come good eventually with some careful fitting and filing and the dark iron coating hides the sins. I’ll be doing diabolical things with oily black washes later.

I suspect that this is also the case with a number of the smaller British moulders. Even if they had a place in our hearts, they needed a fair bit of filing and puttying to fill it. So I will not be quite as dismissive of Czech small-run kits in the future. They have an echo in the past.