The Little World

Well, the City of Prince George flies again. Never mind the sad wreck in the museum – here she is in pristine glory.

And a rare enough bird she is, too. There are few models available in 1:72 of inter-war civil aircraft – if you discount the various boxings of the Douglas DC-3 and the sometime-found old Revell or Airfix Ford Trimotors, you are in a pretty bare hangar. I kick myself that I did not take my courage in hand in Stanbridges some years ago and purchase a couple of resin kits that had fetched up on the back shelves. They would have been difficult, no doubt, but rewarding.

They are not the sort of model that earns big or steady money for major companies – but we can always hope to cache a Czech every now and then. I shall not be so faint-hearted again when something shows up at a swap meet or in the Airfix classic boxes. I note that there may be some interwar biplanes in this set of re-boxes that will be good exercises in sanding and filling.

The City of Prince George will join a rather exclusive section of Stein’s Air World – The Pioneers. She’ll not be the first float-plane there nor the last – Canada is a land of lakes between mountains or out on the inhospitable muskeg. In many cases the water and the air are the only two options for transport as the dirt is either vertical or quicksand. Let’s hope more amphibians show up at garage sales.