Misc. Freight - HO Scale

Freight for ramps and transshipment points

Crates, boxes, sacks and bags of various shapes and sizes, finished in color and with pronounced detail. That is the whole content of this set and at the same time exactly what most model ramps lack. A ramp without freight looks freshly built rather than like a place where work goes on every day.

The manufacturer adds a period picture to it: in North America freight was moved every day across industrial ramps, around packing houses, in ports and at stations. It is exactly this kind of setting the set is meant for, and dividing the content into several smaller heaps catches it better than one tidy row.

The usefulness is high above all because the freight can be used three times. The first time on a ramp, the second as a load placed inside an open car, the third on the bed of a truck. One set therefore fills more places on a board than a set of figures, which is always tied to one particular scene.

In setting it out the rule is that the freight should look half worked through. A couple of crates pushed aside, one tilted, two laid on top of each other and a gap between them to walk through. A perfectly aligned heap is read by the eye as a product, an irregular one as work.

The goods fall into HO size, which in numbers is expressed as a scale of 1:87. The set suits a station warehouse, a siding into a works, a dockside and the yard of a wholesaler, where goods are transferred from one vehicle to another.

Color is more important with freight than it seems. A single-colored heap merges with the floor of a ramp, whereas alternating shades tell the individual pieces apart and from a distance the heap reads as an assortment rather than as one block.