Mixed Signals

A belated Happy New Year to you all – I’ve been at the workshop this week clearing the orders that had built up while I’d been on my Christmas break, and I’m pleased to say that it’s pretty much all done.

This means that we can return to the normal Friday business of new releases. At the end of last year we suffered a slight technical hitch that meant that we had to replace a number of 3D printed masters, which in turn knocked our release schedule out a bit. So our releases for the start of this year aren’t necessarily those we’d originally planned – but since we never publish our schedule, no-one but us is affected by that ! But rest assured, behind the scenes here at Brigade, minor panic has ensued…

Today we have some 19th Century oddities in the form of some semaphore towers. Before the advent of wireless or telephones, semaphore towers were used to transmit messages over long distances, far faster than runners or even mounted messengers could manage. There were several systems, but one very common one was the Chappe system which used two wooden arms mounted on a crossbar – the angles of the three components resulted in the following alphabet:

Our four models come from different parts of the world – the Chatley Heath tower was part of the London-Portsmouth line, while we also have models from France, Malta and India. Each model is supplied with a random signal arm (we have the letters ‘B’, ‘R’, ‘I’, ‘G’, ‘A’, ‘D’ and ‘E’ available) but scratchbuilding others from plastic strip should be a straightforward task.

SSS-8124 – Chatley Heath Tower – £1.25
SSS-8125 – Chappe Tower – £0.75
SSS-8126 – Maltese Tower – £1.00
SSS-8127 – Indian Tower – £1.50