Scale Models

Models of Television Engineering Equipment

There are various models of Television Outside Broadcast equipment and vehicles, these range from the commercial offerings (e.g. “Dinky”) to entirely home-made items.

Here we show some that we have details for, either via direct contact or by searches on the Internet.

If you are interested in building models of any of our items and need any information, please get in touch using our contact email which can be found on our About us page.

Commercial models

Dinky Toys

Dinky Toys was the brand name for a range of die-cast zamac zinc alloy miniature vehicles produced by Meccano Ltd. They were made in England from 1934 to 1979, at a factory in Binns Road in Liverpool1.

Dinky produced several television related vehicles, both BBC and ITV, here are some examples:

The great adventure of small Citroëns

Alain Dufour has contacted us, he runs a French language forum and website called La Grand Aventure Des Petites Citroën (English translation via Google Translate).

He was enquiring about Richard’s Roving Eye article, as the famous units were built on Citroën CX and DS vehicles.

Alain’s site has photographs of many model Citroën vehicles illustrating different types and variants, of particular interest to us is the sub-forum Véhicules de la presse, de la radio, de la télévision et du cinéma (English translation: Press, radio, television and film vehicles).

Modified commercial models

Flickr user “bedfordvalman” has constructed a model of our “Southern TV” vehicle by modifying a Corgi2 commercial model of a Bedford VAL coach:

Scratch built models

Phil Nott Railway Models

BECG’s own Phil Nott is also a ‘OO’ railway layout modeller, he has (not surprisingly) built several models of BBC TV, Thames TV, ATV and London Weekend TV OB vehicles and equipment over the years. Here is a selection in “OO” (1.76) scale:

Elstree Fantasy Land

John Huddlestone has built a “tram layout” called Elstree Fantasy Land. He says “The model tramway layout shows the filming of ABC Television’s 1965 series of the Avengers on Shenley Lane and the 1954 Dambusters ABPC film in one of the studios. A model of the Blackpool tram no.166 when it was converted to an outside broadcast unit for ABC Weekend Television operates on the layout fitted with a miniature video camera for live views of the layout; also the Marconi Colour Outside Broadcast Unit built in 1966, for ABC Weekend Television“.

Here are some photographs of part of the layout:

You can also find videos on YouTube and Vimeo, just search for “Elstree Fantasy Land”.

Michael Steele

Michael Steele (son of Howard Steele – Chief Engineer at the ABC Television studios at Teddington) has built a model of Southern TV’s “Southerner” outside broadcast boat!

You can see more about Southerner in this article.

  1. Wikipedia: Dinky Toys ↩︎
  2. Wikipedia: Corgi Toys ↩︎