Unlimited Toy Adventure

Toy Stories presents modeling at 1-to-1 scale

Seldom will you find a TV show equal to last year’s BBC toy extravaganza, James May’s Toy Stories where May takes some of Britain’s most-loved toys on a madcap adventure. You need to see them to believe how far one man will go to encourage children out of bedrooms and away from play-stations.

The series consisted of six fantastic episodes, featuring extraordinary feats of engineering to put generations of British families at the heart of some pretty ludicrous undertakings producing an unusual form of family entertainment.

I was recently introduced to May through an audio DVD about May’s efforts to produce a 10-mile run of a Hornby 1:76.2 scale track linking Barnstaple to Bideford with the world's longest model train set.

I was recently introduced to another unusual scale model train made entirely of Lego Blocks. These are actually moving S Scale trains, more than one can be operated on a layout--in fact there is a lot of modeling you can do with Lego Blocks.

Take A Look At What You Can Do in Brick Country

In researching this escapade, I ran across a full-blown set of videos on YouTube which capture the essence of each feat. These videos are in multi-part sequals. You will find links to each below.

Here is a sample

Episode Title Original airdate Summary
1 "Airfix" 27 October 2009 Attempting to build a full size model Spitfire from a giant Airfix kit.
2 "Plasticine" 3 November 2009 Creating a Plasticine garden and entering it for the 2009 ChelseaFlower Show.
3 "Meccano" 10 November 2009 Building a life-size bridg made entirely out of Meccano (similar to the US Erector Set).
4 "Scalextric" 17 November 2009 Racing two Scalextric cars at the site of former grand prix track Brooklands in Surrey.
5 "Lego" 20 December 2009[6] Attempting to build the world's first full-size house made entirely out of Lego bricks.
6 "Hornby"[7] 25 December 2009[8] Linking Barnstable to Bideford with the world's longest model train set.

The above links will get you started on viewing each of the episodes. They are each a fascinating journey. I was really taken with the Airfix project, here is part 2:

On to part 3:

Here is the next episode:

On to Part 5"

And finally, part 6:

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