Identification Help, Soviet?

[Chops]

I was able to snag this from the For Sale Thread, and it arrived in perfect condition, well packed, and is proving more interesting than ever. There is a photocopy of a manual, in German, which I shall eventually work through translating on Google. In the mean time, can anyone provide identification as to the manufacturer and if it is Soviet in origin?

My limited experience with items of Soviet manufacture is that they tend to be made of celluoid (dolls), models tend two be of a very flimsy plastic, and other things were made of wood or of rugged sheet metal. The few trains sets available for Soviet consumption were sold as relatively complete sets, as buying individual items was just not done.

The emblems are certainly lettered for CCCP and the characteristic Hammer and Sickle. A LOT of detail parts came with it, and I added some of the larger bits, like buffers and some pipes, but it is not clear where the rest of numerous railings, and such go, so I don't want to risk mucking it up with glue spots.

As what can be seen, it appears to be NOS, as there is no wear on the tyres and all the detail bits were sealed. The seller, Mr. Willis, was most obliging and let me know that it runs. I gave it a light lubrication, but doubt I will get to fire it up until next weekend.

[Mountain]

What an interesting find. I can't say I know anything much about it except that my Dad used to tell me that the clever Russians had designed a steam locomotive that could run on a cup full of water for operating in there dessert areas? I know my Dad was most impressed that they were able to do this. I was very young at the time but I recall his fascination about it. Which loco or locos that was I am not sure, except that it was big and black. Was shown on TV here in the 1970's.

[Bigmet]

The box lid, what looks like a four letter brand logo in the loco outline is 'MINI'. That I can confidently guess!

The four words to the left, the translator offers 'kit electrified iron road', which makes reasonable sense; I wonder if the term translated as 'kit' also carries the meaning 'model'? I could see the 'elektri' of the second word but the rest had to be googled as it was "a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma"...

[Bufferstop]

I can't add anything about the model other than it looks to be of a similar quality to that which came out of the former East Germany, which would be a logical source for USSR imports. We have a Russian contributor who goes by the ID Mixy, he's the developer of the SCARM layout planning software and usually only pops up on here when he has another update to the software. You could try a PM to him see if he's seen it before, I would imagine there must be some railway modelling activity in Russia for him to be creating the software. The only other Russian models I can remember were a range of models of all types of subjects built from an extremely strong type of card, pre printed and precut.
He's the only Russian that I'm aware of who is active on here, we get plenty of registration attempts which turn out to be from Russia but they all fail the anti spammer checks, it's possible that some of them are good guys who simply don't have access to "clean" computers. At one point there would be a dozen or more attempts every day but it stopped abruptly when thirty or so individuals from the Russian Embassy were declared "personna non grata" and were asked politely to remove themselves from the country. I can't imagine it was those guys but more likely the youngsters of the families they brought with them, we get a similar home grown rash a few days into most school holidays.

[b308]

Russia certainly produced their own ranges of H0 scale models, it's also worth bearing in mind that other countries also use Russian as their language, so it could be from somewhere else, such as Ukraine or Bulgaria! Looking at the hand written address it looks like that particular part (the first owner?) was in one of the Slav speaking countries, travelling a fair bit over there I'd say that address is somewhere in Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia/Hungary/Poland. Is there any more on it? Also under the loco which someone else said "Mini" the wheels and motion actually spell something as well! The loco itself looks Germanic though there are plenty of similar locos in the USSR!

[b308]

I've just sent the box lid photo to a Bulgarian friend, he says it is Russian but doesn't know who the manufacturer is, the loco appears to be based on a Piko BR55 and is at least 30 years old!

[Bigmet]

Also under the loco which someone else said "Mini" the wheels and motion actually spell something as well!

Good spot about the stylised letters for the loco wheels! Cannot read them though - MINI was the one dead easy word...

...The loco itself looks Germanic though there are plenty of similar locos in the USSR!

The coaches are typical of German design too. I'll be first to admit scanty knowledge of Russian railways, except that they had the largest single class of steam loco, an 0-10-0 which was built to an estimated total of 12,000. When your territory stretches halfway around the globe - near enough! - you need an awful lot of traction to operate the railway covering it...