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Sunday, 19 July 2015

Bellona Rubber Buildings


Yes - Bellona not Triang Countryside
Yes - rubber not vac form plastic.

With thanks to DavidP for the photograph of these recent acquisitions of his.

Some are marked with reference numbers - small house H4 front left, bunker M4 in thhe middle, with larger  house H3 and ruined version HD3 behind it on the right. The haystack is in the same style but with no reference number or Bellona branding at the back.


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9 comments:

  1. Hugh Walter19 July 2015 at 16:34

    I can confirm the Bell-tent was also made in [latex?] rubber, as I have some. Do we know they were definitely Bellona, or just 'after', I ask because the detail on my examples would suggest they are castings from the insides of the styrene product rather than anything to do with the mould.

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  2. Vintage Wargaming19 July 2015 at 17:46

    Hugh my understanding is these are definitely as manufactured and are clearly marked Bellona on the piece (except for the haystack, which may be from another maker. The small house (marked H4) looks very similar to the vac form lodge in the Country HOuse and Lodge (vac form) set and it is possible the larger house is the same as the Country House - my catalogue shows only the rear of this piece and I only have a photo of the fromnt of the rubber version. So Bellona may have reused their own design but I don't think any one has been home casting rubber buildings using the vac form set as a mould. There is no indication of the destroyed house or the pill box being in any of the Bellona catalogues I have.

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  3. Hugh Walter20 July 2015 at 01:35

    The pill-box had a separate roof, but it was there - BB11.

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_x0lX220booY/TAeg01sbSNI/AAAAAAAAB_Q/6rEKWfHkAgo/s1600/Bellona+Battleground+Battle-ho-rama+Vac+Forms+3.jpg

    Agree with you on the er...corn heap! Stack from bales! But the others are all from Bellona sheets, or at least if the destroyed farmhouse wasn't Bellona (BB10?) it was one of the other makes, as it's in at least one of the war games books?

    H

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  4. Michael "Reggie" Davis20 July 2015 at 05:05

    Happy memories of Bellona rubber buildings. They were state of the art in their day and still look great.

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  5. Tim Gow20 July 2015 at 08:40

    I've never seen those before. What sort of scale are they?

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  6. Stuart Asquith20 July 2015 at 09:47

    I didn't realise that Bellona ever produced rubber buildings, that being the province of Triang in their Trackside series. I know Bellona featured plastic vac-form, cut out, self assembly items, designed by Terry Wise (?) and the front left house in the photograph appears to be one such item, but the rest I really do not recogonise. Fascinating stuff. Well done.
    Stuart Asquith

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  7. Vintage Wargaming20 July 2015 at 10:09

    Not having seeen them in the flesh (rubber?) my understanding is thatthey are simi;ar in sicale to the Triang Countryside ones or the Bellona vac formed ones/

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  8. Anonymous24 April 2020 at 15:45

    They are all Bellona rubber - the haystack is C1, Dormer Cottage H3, Dormer Cottage Damaged H3D, Toll House H4 and Concrete Pillbox M4. They all correspond exactly to line drawings in a catalogue I have, brown ink on buff manilla card, 8 pages (C) Merberlen Ltd 1965. Stamped from (Tony Newton's) Post Office / St Mark's Models, St Marks Road, Maidenhead.

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  9. Vintage Wargaming24 April 2020 at 16:09

    Thanks, that’s very interesting.

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