Saturday, May 25, 2013
The Marklin Civilian Ships
I've presented a few of the Marklin ships in some of my posts, but have never dedicated an entire post to them. Marklin is still a you manufacturer, and has been around for more than a century. The company was founded in 1859 and originally produced fine railroad sets (trains). Their success led them to acquire other companies, which allowed them to diversify in terms of the range of toys that were produced. They still are in existence today, and still produce world-renowned toys for young people.
Marklin produced outstanding ships from the early 1900's and later. They were made probably of tinplate with clockwork driven mechanism to propel them in the water. Children would bring these boats to local parts with large-sized ponds, and the children would wind the toys up, and them let them move in the water. I assume that the park lakes were shallow enough so that if the wind did not push the toy boat back to the sides of the lake, then a person could wade out and fetch the toy. Sometimes these park lakes also had rowboats for rent, so maybe helpful other people would help.
Montreal has 2 large-sized park lakes . One is at the top of Mount Royal in the centre of our city, and the lake is called Beaver Lake. The other park is called Lafontaine park. I'm sure that at the beginning of the 20th century and earlier, these 2 parks has lots of local people and new immigrants who would go to these architecturally-designed parks. And I'm sure there were even children with sailboats, and perhaps even the occasional clockwork driven boat. I've never seen anyone play with a boat in these parts, but then again, my wife and I rarely go to them.
The toy ships that I am presenting for today's post are the civilian types - ocean liners, river boats, and yachts. Their other type of ships were the military battleships. I would highly recommend visiting the link below to read the outstanding narratives and descriptions that accompany all of the ships that I have presented today. When you go to the link, simply add the words "Marklin ships" in the search engine "keywords" space at the top of the page.
I wanted to present these beautiful ships in the way I've been presenting toys lately - against a white background. However, all the fine details on these ships makes it harder to separate the grey tones from the ship. Maybe in the future on a slow day, I'll rework the images., because personally, I like the way a toy "stands out" by itself against white.
I like the way these toys even came with a metal roller support, so the child could pull the ship to the park lake. I'm sure the parents had lots of fun playing with these toys.
The riverboat above reminds me of the 1951 Kathryn Hepburn-Humphrey Bogart movie titled the African Queen. The movie had the same type of boat, by without the lifeboat. The movie boat ran by a steam engine.
The last 10-12 days of May here in Montreal have been miserable. It's been rain, rain, and more rain. The good news is that I was able to reseed the bare spots on my lawn , and the grass is growing nicely. Ironically, we has a water alert this week. A repair and maintenance crew accidentally let the water level in our largest reservoir and water purification plant get too low. It's to early to assign blame, so the city will be conducting a review to find out what went wrong. As a consequence, the bottom residue leaked out into the water pipes throughout much of the city. 1,200,000 were given "advisory warnings" to boil their water for drinking or cooking. Bathing and shampooing were OK though. I bought water to wash my hair and shave. Some of the Starbucks cafes did not serve coffee for 2 days! Bottled water sold out in a few stores,and record sales were recorded!
Thanks for dropping by,
and have a great day,
wherever you may be.
Stacey
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