Zerogee
Clencher's Bogleman
I was recently having a rummage around in the G-scale and Garten Bahn sections of German eBay (eBay.de), and happened to spot four auction items by a firm I was previously unaware of, called Minideko. They seem to be a small manufacturer of hand-made miniatures for a number of markets, including the 1/12 scale Doll's House collecting scene, but in this case they had made some G-scale or 1/24 loads of building supplies and similar accessories. The four auction lots up for offer were mixed selections of pieces, each set consisting of maybe 10-20 separate items - to cut a long story short, I bid on all four lots and won them all! Minideko did not actually offer international postage in their auctions, but they were very helpful when I contacted them and agreed to ship all the items in one box to me in the UK, for a fee of about 20 euros; they also happily took Paypal for the payment, which was very useful as many German sellers require bank transfers - and anyone who has had to do one of those from the UK knows how much our banks [strike]rip us off[/strike] charge us for that service!
A nice big parcel turned up a few days later on the Parcelfarce van, and I opened it to find a huge selection of bits and pieces of construction material loads - more than enough to fill many goods wagons and platforms. The photo here shows just a few examples - pallets, crates, timber loads, rolls of roofing felt, pipes, insulation boards, concrete reinforcing mesh, bags of chopped firewood and loads more - the items shown in the pics are probably less than a sixth of the total amount I received. All pieces are hand-made out of all kinds of materials - all the wooden items are real wood, palletised goods are wrapped in either clingfilm or what appears to be a thin material very similar to model aircraft covering film, the wire mesh is painted a nice rusty dark brown and so on. There is nothing here that you couldn't make for yourself in a similar way if you collected the materials and had the time and skill - but as most of us seems to be "time-poor" these days, I was more than happy to buy these and pay someone for their ingenuity and hours of work!
The whole lot ended up costing me something around fifty quid INCLUDING the shipping, which I reckon was money very well spent.
Since buying them I've had several email exchanges with Joerg, who runs Minideko, and I told him I'd be putting a post up on here about his products; his website is http://www.mideko-unna.de < Link To www.mideko-unna.de - at the moment there is little or nothing of G-scale interest on there, because he seems to make items in batches and the packs I bought were the end of one batch - but he has told me that he will be uploading more G scale stuff soon, and he was very interested in what I had to tell him about the G-scale hobby in the UK, and about GSC in particular; I think he would welcome any ideas or suggestions for things they might make, so contact him though his website if you have any good ideas or requests!
Oh, one thing I should mention - and perhaps the only real "con" among the "pros" - is that because of the materials they are made from, most of the pieces will NOT be weatherproof, so don't put them in wagons that you leave outside. Some are also light enough that they will need to be tacked in place in or on wagons, perhaps with a blob of silicone glue so that they can be cleanly removed if required, otherwise there is a risk that some might blow away if the wind gets up!
So, take a look at http://www.mideko-unna.de < Link To www.mideko-unna.de either now or in the near future (by which time there should hopefully be some more G items on sale). From what I have here, I'd recommend them wholeheartedly on quality, ingenuity and service.
Jon.
A nice big parcel turned up a few days later on the Parcelfarce van, and I opened it to find a huge selection of bits and pieces of construction material loads - more than enough to fill many goods wagons and platforms. The photo here shows just a few examples - pallets, crates, timber loads, rolls of roofing felt, pipes, insulation boards, concrete reinforcing mesh, bags of chopped firewood and loads more - the items shown in the pics are probably less than a sixth of the total amount I received. All pieces are hand-made out of all kinds of materials - all the wooden items are real wood, palletised goods are wrapped in either clingfilm or what appears to be a thin material very similar to model aircraft covering film, the wire mesh is painted a nice rusty dark brown and so on. There is nothing here that you couldn't make for yourself in a similar way if you collected the materials and had the time and skill - but as most of us seems to be "time-poor" these days, I was more than happy to buy these and pay someone for their ingenuity and hours of work!
The whole lot ended up costing me something around fifty quid INCLUDING the shipping, which I reckon was money very well spent.
Since buying them I've had several email exchanges with Joerg, who runs Minideko, and I told him I'd be putting a post up on here about his products; his website is http://www.mideko-unna.de < Link To www.mideko-unna.de - at the moment there is little or nothing of G-scale interest on there, because he seems to make items in batches and the packs I bought were the end of one batch - but he has told me that he will be uploading more G scale stuff soon, and he was very interested in what I had to tell him about the G-scale hobby in the UK, and about GSC in particular; I think he would welcome any ideas or suggestions for things they might make, so contact him though his website if you have any good ideas or requests!
Oh, one thing I should mention - and perhaps the only real "con" among the "pros" - is that because of the materials they are made from, most of the pieces will NOT be weatherproof, so don't put them in wagons that you leave outside. Some are also light enough that they will need to be tacked in place in or on wagons, perhaps with a blob of silicone glue so that they can be cleanly removed if required, otherwise there is a risk that some might blow away if the wind gets up!
So, take a look at http://www.mideko-unna.de < Link To www.mideko-unna.de either now or in the near future (by which time there should hopefully be some more G items on sale). From what I have here, I'd recommend them wholeheartedly on quality, ingenuity and service.
Jon.
