SCALE MODEL NEWS

THIS EXCELLENT LITTLE RETRO MODEL will make a useful accessory for dioramas based on US 0-gauge railroads, and aircraft kits to 1:48 scale. Mat Irvine reports:  During a recent trip to the US east coast, I had an opportunity to drop by Atlantis Models, located on Long Island, New York. Atlantis are now best known for taking over the vast amount of unwanted tools from when Revell itself was taken over a year ago, the new owner deciding that it just didn’t want all the old moulds. Fortunately, Pete Vetri and Rick Delfavero – who head Atlantis – stepped in, and acquired the lot. And they have been busy with several reissues a month of models that originated not only from Revell, but also Monogram and Aurora, with some Renwal kits as well. One of the Revell old moulds is the White-Fruehauf Gas Truck in 1:48 scale, which forms one of a quartet of similarly-scaled kits. 1:48 scale was not a scale often used by Revell, especially for vehicles, but 1:48 is 0-gauge in the US, and is also a ...

From Mat Irvine: One of the newest of the ‘new companies’ with connections to the original Aurora company is Atlantis, the model-kit arm of Megahobby, an online hobby distributor with the declared aim of bringing plastic modelling: “back to the level of popularity it once enjoyed.” Atlantis is run by Pete Vetri and Rick Delfavero, who have cemented the Aurora connection by using as consultant long-time Aurora Project Manager, Andy Yanchus. Left to right, Rick and Pete, with consultant Andy, in the Megahobby warehouse, Long Island. Atlantis White Stallion kit, box (above) and assembled (below). Latest from Atlantis Latest releases both have Aurora connections, but with a slight difference. The 1:12 scale White Stallion kit is one of Aurora’s originals, and has also been issued separately with riders in the form of Zorro and the Lone Ranger. Zorro is another Atlantis issue, and the horse is identical in both kits, except that Zorro’s mount is moulded in black plastic. The simple colour c...

David Jefferis on close encounters: On the night of September 19-20, 1961, the US couple Betty and Barney Hill reckoned they experienced a close encounter with a UFO. During the incident they ‘lost’ two hours, but survived intact, to file a report to US Air Force investigators the very next day. They claimed to have seen a silent, cigar-shaped craft, crewed by up to 11 humanoid aliens. The Hill Incident There was no hard proof for their story, but the Hills insisted it was true, and that they had been kidnapped for a short time by the UFO. The event became the first widely-publicized claim of an alien abduction, and was later published as the best-selling 1966 book The Interrupted Journey and the 1975 TV movie The UFO Incident . Well, the Hill Incident took place half a century ago, and assorted UFO stories have rarely been out of the media since, or indeed, from toy and model company brochures. So what’s available right now? Atlantis UFO invader from outer space This 1:48 scale model...

It’s the end of the space trucking era, says David Jefferis: Forty two years after Armstrong and Aldrin stepped onto the Moon’s surface, it was touchdown for the Space Shuttle Atlantis , and the last-ever mission for the most complex spacecraft system ever built. There’s moaning and groaning by the bucketload, with headlines claiming the end of the US space program, but the reality is that the Shuttle, whatever its merits, represented a retreat from the Moon and true space exploration. For the Shuttle was a space truck to Earth orbit, and no further. Let’s hope that privateer companies like Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, fulfill their ambitions and take humans onward and outward, to explore the High Frontier. Big model Back to the workbench, and of the many, many Shuttle models, which is the best one for the nostalgia-buff to assemble? Well, the real answer is that there is no single kit that’s head and shoulders over the rest, but there is one that’s big, d...