My Little Playmo-Village in northern England somewhere

[Martin Milner]

I'm green with envy.   

I have a spare room at the moment which is my study, but my largest Playmobil-friendly table surface is a fraction of the space you have, and I can't even fit all the castle parts I have on it, let alone a village and a forest as well!

It's great to see such a layout, and be able to recognise Steck, System-X, and and a lot of the sets and figures in use.

You've spurred me into action. My castle, one assembled, became a dump for loose Playmobil bits and figures, but yesterday I started to tidy up, re-arrange, and think about the whole set up. I'll say no more now, but I've started planning my historical context and background, and hope to have things better arranged soon.

[Richard]

Hello ... Is it castle "show and tell" time?

The summer before last, as many of you know, the "errant" David Hamer visited us at our home on Vancouver Island.

During that time, David and I constructed a Playmobil Steck-System medieval castle in our "pool" room. (The indoor swimming pool is temporarily covered, so we are using the "pool" room as a "play" room.)

It took us several weeks to construct the castle, as we did it between a lot of site-seeing around the Island. (You will notice that our castle lacks the interesting Playmobil klicky's that Tim has in his Castle.)

No, we did not leave it up. It's all packed away now.

Here's a couple of photos ...

[Martin Milner]

Wow, that's big! I think we've gone beyond mere castle and move onto walled town or city status now. 

It also illustrates one big advantage of Steck over System X, thw ability to build upwards as well as sideways.

So did you neve actually put klickies in, Richard, or was that just never photographed?

[Richard]

Hello, Martin ...

It also illustrates one big advantage of Steck over System X, the ability to build upwards as well as sideways.

It's no secret, Martin ... I much prefer the old Steck-System!

 

So did you never actually put klickies in, Richard, or was that just never photographed?

We took a photo of a visit from the local clergy (please see attachment)

However, we never populated our "walled city" like Tim did in his great diorama! 

All the best,
Richard

[Timotheos]

I'm green with envy.   

I have a spare room at the moment which is my study, but my largest Playmobil-friendly table surface is a fraction of the space you have, and I can't even fit all the castle parts I have on it, let alone a village and a forest as well!

It's great to see such a layout, and be able to recognise Steck, System-X, and and a lot of the sets and figures in use.

You've spurred me into action. My castle, one assembled, became a dump for loose Playmobil bits and figures, but yesterday I started to tidy up, re-arrange, and think about the whole set up. I'll say no more now, but I've started planning my historical context and background, and hope to have things better arranged soon.

Hi Martin

I'm looking forward to seeing your set-up! 

I was having serious table problems.  Worse, tables are expensive and I would have had to sacrifice playmobil purchases to buy the tables.

So, for the medieval village scene, I used saw horses for legs and laid sheets of plywood over them.  If I want to enlarge it, I just throw on another strip of plywood and re-arrange the saw horses.

-Tim

[Timotheos]

It's no secret, Martin ... I much prefer the old Steck-System!

Hi Richard, your castle looked great.  I especially liked what you did with the gate house.  The steck drawbridge piece is a hard part to work with.

I'm trying to accept system X, but steck pieces work together so well.  It's a crime that so many great steck pieces are permanently off the market.  I guess Geobra is just going to sit on the molds.  It's a shame they can't lease it out to another toy company that will re-package it as part of a castle-construction line, or something.

Tim   

[Arizzo]

this is a nice set-up, Tim 

I especially like the minstrels gallery in the great hall 

[Timotheos]

this is a nice set-up, Tim 

I especially like the minstrels gallery in the great hall 

I put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into that one.

When I was in my early 20s, I ordered a lot of bargain books from Barnes and Noble (I was in the army at the time, stationed overseas).  One of the oddball books I ordered was a tome on 12th-16th century manor architecture fundamentals.  At the time, I only opened the book once and thought it was a bore.  But, now it's like my steck-building Bible. 

-Tim

[playmofire]

So, for the medieval village scene, I used saw horses for legs and laid sheets of plywood over them.  If I want to enlarge it, I just throw on another strip of plywood and re-arrange the saw horses.

-Tim

All in the best mediaeval tradition.

[Timotheos]

All in the best mediaeval tradition.

That's right!  I forgot about the trestle tables.  Playmobil was really paying attention to detail when it made the trestle tables that go with Castle 3666.