Paul Rees

Paul regularly contributes to the Tri-ang Forums with Model Land and MINIX products. All the comments are Paul's Still to this day the Model-Land factory is a most impressive model and a personal favourite of mine since childhood . No doubt had it been reintroduced it would have made a welcome return to the Hornby range The fascination with both  Model-Land and Minix ranges has always been the focus in acquiring and putting together ‘Triang Town’  . This  was a golden age for the Rovex product range , it was immense and offered a truly wonderful world that so many of us still enjoy to this day                             Tri-ang were Kings at keeping production costs down with the Minix caravan chassis being a good case . Just the bare minimum in additional tooling costs transformed the models into exciting, colourful additions to the range   A couple of mint boxed R133 wagons : certainly not the pinnacle of finescale modelling but for children of the 1970’s  these would have been a colourful addition to any goods train . Manufactured only in 1974 Hornby produced them using the original Minic Motorway boat tooling  and were also  available in starter sets         Model-Land RML 45 shops/older style offices in an unusual colour combination Further experiments in building positioning, the pre-production samples have unusual colour variations from those produced commercially     Another preproduction Model-Land RML38 Townhouse (1965-66) added to the collection which now features three different versions . Rear doors were never fitted as the extra detailing wouldn’t be required when displayed or photographed .Tri-ang experimented with a few unusual colour variations on these examples, production would start two to three years later in 1968 with completely different coloured components     RML38 Model-Land Townhouse : this particular variation arrived in the post yesterday, I’ve only seen one other similar but it was in rather poor condition. Judging by the navy blue doors this was probably an early sample for the 1968 production run  as the eventual decision was to go for bright blue doors for all the shops/townhouse models from that year. Only 2565 RML38 kits were produced, all in 1968, featuring light salmon coloured brickwork as opposed to maroon which was found on the prerelease/preproduction samples. In total I’ve seen six different variations, five of which are featured in the accompanying photos             Note identicle, but one with prices