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Forum 43
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Topic starter
04/06/2019 1:23 pm
"Chernobyl" on HBO is some of the best TV I've ever seen - but what does this have to do with 1:43?
As someone who worked in the nuclear power industry, and who has several dozen Soviet-era toy and model cars, I was glued to this one. I learned a lot from the series, a lot more than I ever knew from reading about it back in the day. The series was expertly crafted and made just non-technical enough for the lay viewer. Filmed in Moscow, Ukraine, and elsewhere, the settings (and effects) seemed all too real. My wife, not a techy by any means, was immersed with me.
Back when there was still a USSR, I acquired a lot of 1:43 diecasts from Russia and Eastern Europe. I still have several dozen cars and trucks. Car-wise, I couldn't find any faults in the HBO production. All the Ladas, Moskvitches, Volgas, Zaporozhecs, RAF and UAZ vans, fire trucks, Kamaz, MAZ, and ZIL trucks - even the DZ-117 bulldozers - looked like 1:43 models I have or once had. And all were appropriate to the last years of the USSR. IMCDB will have a fun time with this one.
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I have a bunch more, just haven't got pics of them yet.
04/06/2019 1:52 pm
It is a really good series. Nice models!
04/06/2019 4:46 pm
Interesting ...
The first truck is MAZ, I believe.
The van is RAF, back in the days (in Bulgaria) we called them simply Latvia.
The last track is GAZ, the tank reads "Flammable" (OGNEOPASNO).
I was 15 year old when the Chernobyl disaster happened, the Bulgarian government kept it a secret for 10-15 days until the rumors spread and they had to publicly announced it.
05/06/2019 12:17 am
(PIC) Let me just say, Best Book Ev.er. I highly recommend it...
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Now we resume our program in 1:43.
Topic starter
05/06/2019 3:05 am
Chav - The first truck is a Kamaz, but you are right on the other two.
The RAF Latvia is from the old Saratov series of diecasts. Thanks for the translation on the tanker. In the TV series water tankers similar to this were used to wash down the streets of Pripyat.
05/06/2019 4:32 am
Kamaz, that's right ...
Kamaz stands for Kamskiy Automobile Plant (Zavod) and
Maz stands for Minsk Automobile Plant (Zavod)
Here is a water tanker
found this picture online, along with many others, looks like there is plethora of Soviet era truck models
06/06/2019 5:01 am
I was 9, only 2200 kilometres away. We got the cloud 2 days after the explosion...
06/06/2019 7:38 am
What country?
Looks like the cloud went northwest first and then spread all over Europe and Asia.
06/06/2019 10:40 am
North of France.
My bad,not 2 days but 5 days after the explosion, the radioactive cloud is over France. As a kid, I was already scared to death about that, it was the main news at the time on TV for weeks...
I've seen the mini series, it's even more frightening that what I remember of it.
06/06/2019 11:04 am
Corrections and further detail
Hey, I was only ~60 miles away, luckily it was to the south where radiation spread much less. And I stayed around for 4 years after the disaster...
I checked out the HBO show sporadically. The car/truck content is period correct. However, I get distracted with all the British accents and occasional errors/misspellings.
As for Harvey's pics:
The top one is a KamAZ-4310 6x6 truck. Those were mainly for military, but some were used for city/utility purposes. The label on the door points to a fire department in the city of Kazan where the models were made at the "Elecon" plant.
The 2nd pic is RAF-2203 Latvia minivan in fire department livery. The RAF here refers to Riga, Latvia auto factory - and not the British air force.
The 3rd pic is the aforementioned DZ-117 bulldozer. The models were made as a side business by the same plant as the real machinery.
The last pic is a tanker truck based on extended ZIL-130 chassis. This is the only model of the 4 that is a conversion. Looks like it's from early 90's, when these types of handmade conversions were popular before the boom of more advanced resin or copper models hit.
Topic starter
09/06/2019 4:45 am
Thanks Max. Model details duly noted.