Monday, February 13, 2017

A fence too far

A few years ago, I acquired a Dutch post-war toy Bailey bridge. It was composed of soft-metal side panels painted green and small wooden planks and small metal pins. The brownish discoloured instruction paper was written in Dutch language that predates 1953 as is obvious from the old spelling form. So, it must have been produced directly after WWII. I wasn't sure what to do with. For some time I decided to leave it as is. As a distant memory of the troublesome liberation of this flat land with its rivers and canals. A toy that was played with to reenact the temporary bridges which were laid to move the tanks and trucks over those rivers and canals. A few weeks ago, I finally decided to do something with it and create a fence from the soft metal side panels. I will keep all the items unaltered, so it can be restored to a toy Bailey bridge at any time. But in the meantime the panels can function as a fence; a fence too far. Now, the whole shape is still rough and I still need to paint the wooden connectors, but nevertheless, I like to have re-purposed this old toy on my layout with old trains.


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