Question on vintage buildings

[Dave Farquhar]

In my quest to find brands of buildings that would be suitable for a prewar layout, I've found some interesting prospects, and they have of course made me really curious.

There was a line called Twinkletown produced by a company called H&H in Pittsburgh in the 1940s. While postwar, the building kits were tin litho, and from the one pic I was able to find by searching Ebay, it looks like it would look just fine on a prewar layout.

Some people have noted similarities between some of H&H's houses and those marketed by Skyline, until about 1952. Skyline had a line of very attractive tin litho buildings. Given the similarities, did Skyline perhaps buy the line from H&H?

Another intriguing possibility. Skyline brought out a very small line (3 items) of plastic buildings. Not long after Skyline disappeared, Littletown came along. Littletown had a Cape Cod house that looked like a plastic version of those earlier tin litho houses. So... Could the LIttletown line have had its origins with H&H in the 1940s, and bounced around from company to company until landing with Bachmann and being merged with the Plasticville line?

I know there was a recent article in CTT about Littletown but I didn't do a good job of keeping the details straight in my mind.

Does anyone have any recollection of any of this?

I have little interest in any of the plastic stuff but I'm going to start keeping an eye out for Twinkletown and Skyline buildings. The styling seems to go well with the tin litho that Lionel, Flyer, Ives, and Marx did, and they made buildings the train companies did not.

Thanks for any info/insights you might be able to provide.

[Anonymous]

Hi Dave,

I wrote that article about Littletown. It appeared in the Sept issue of CTT. My research did not uncover any connection with Skyline. However, the Littletown line was definitely influenced by Plasticville and Marx. It's equally possible that they looked at Skyline for ideas.

Do you have any photos of the 3 plastic Skyline buildings? That would be most revealing if there is a connection.

Dennis Brennan

[Anonymous]

Hi Dave,

According to an article written by Roger Carp in the Sept. 98 issue of CTT, Bachmann bought at least some tooling from Skyline when they went out of business.

Check out the www. plasticville.org website for an online reprint.

[cnw1995]

That was a great article, Dennis. A very interesting look at those buildings.

[Anonymous]

Dave,

I'm always searching for tinplate buildings for my prewar-style layout.

Early postwar Skyline tin buildings look good with Twinkletown, but I don't know if there is a manufacturing connection. Beyond the realm of Lionel, prewar Flyer, and some European tinplate buildings, there aren't a whole lot of other tinplate buildings around, especially non-railroad structures. (I've got a prewar layout with tinplate buildings, so I'm always on the lookout for more).

Marx made stations and also other structures not related to railroads, but beware that some are scaled way too big. Marx also made a skyscraper building that would be a real standout on a tinplate layout. Ohio Art made a tin barn (bought one at York last year). Hornby made British O gauge buildings, some of which look American.

There are also some misc. "toy" buildings that don't have anything to do with trains but would fit in. For example, I saw a nice tinplate church in an antique store that was a German music box, but would be just right on a tinplate layout. There's even a line of Hallmark Christmas ornaments that are tinplate buildings (but the scale is smaller than HO).

Just keep you eyes open for "toys" as well as train-related buildings.

Neil Besougloff
editor

[Dave Farquhar]

Thanks for the answers, everyone. Whew!

Dennis, the only pictures I've seen of the Skyline or Twinkletown were from searching Ebay. Slim pickings. I thoroughly enjoyed your article but obviously I need to read it a couple more times because my absorption of the information in it wasn't so great. And thanks for the pointers to the articles on the Plasticville site (http://www.plasticvilleusa.org/info/cttarticles.html if anyone else is interested).

Neil, thanks for the tip. I just bought a tin Ferris wheel this weekend, intended as a decoration (it appears to be a repro of an old Wolverine or Chein toy). It's sized just about right for O gauge. I've seen some Marx buildings and I think they'd be fabulous for Standard Gauge, but they'd make my 800-series freights look like another carnival ride to go with that Ferris wheel. On occasion I find old tin litho banks but a lot of times they're way undersized. I may just bite the bullet, start buying them, and use them at the back of the layout for some forced perspective.

I'll keep an eye out for that Marx skyscraper. Will the asking price on it be in the three- or four-figure range when I finally find it?

[mersenne6]

The German manufacturer, Bing, made a wide variety of tin litho buildings in the prewar period. The biggest problem is that of scale, most of the houses are too small to put right up front on the layout, however, if you are running primarily tinplate then issues of scale shouldn't be too much of a problem considering that these buildings were what prewar train runners were using on their layouts.

[cnw1995]

Here's a picture of the Marx skyscraper...

http://www.toys-n-cars.com/images/images2/skyscraper.jpg

There's one on eBay now at $123.