..and Ireland! – I have long been a collector of 1:87 or HO Scale truck models and I think it’s fair to say that I would need to build a large extension on TBHQ or more likely quadruple its size to get anywhere near to being able to house my collection that is currently in loads of boxes in my parents loft! For me it all started with a freebie model I was sent in the post by Schmitz Cargobull when I was a young teenager. Being impressed with the model I received in the post I started saving my money and I found a postal address to buy from, then I moved onto heading to a wonderful model shop on Pentonville Road, Kings Cross, London by the name of Victors. Then from there I started contact with Mr Herpa UK himself Ernest Springley. I now have 500+ models and in all honesty I don’t really want to add them up as I suspect it’s heading closer to 1000 models and I’ve just started buying more regularly again!

The one bug bare of mine always used to be that there were never many British vehicles readily available, the ones I did learn about became very difficult to track down, until the invention of eBay! I soon learnt that a good majority of the UK models had been orchestrated by Mr Springley and were down to his collaboration and working with Herpa. Since those early days I have now become a real “collector” and among other internet activities, I do trawl through eBay looking for models at least once a week. Usually late at night or when I’m sat on the bog, Mrs Truckblog must think I’m up to something else! Anyway I digress, if you know where to look you can find the right things so I’m lucky enough to have a few rare models these days that Mr Springley has tipped me off about over the years.

Nowadays I want to get ahead of the game so I’m playing a little bit of catch up and trying to get hold of as many of the recent models that have been produced so I won’t have to hunt around for them. All the above have been release in Herpa’s standard range which mean’s that they aren’t produced in a restricted run or in an “exclusiv” silver box. It’s not just a case of producing what they fancy, there is consultation and permission granted by the company whose livery is to be used and a lot of hard work put in by Mr Springley getting the model looking as life-like as possible and I have to say they look pretty damn good. Some of you prefer the larger 1:50 Scale models and I don’t blame you they are bigger and can achieve slightly more detail than the smaller, but the downside being the size and the higher price tag. As a collector I still prefer the smaller scale and I will continue to collect, but now I’m even more inclined to collect as more British liveries come through.  All new releases are listed HERE on the Herpa website each month.

Mr Springley is always open to ideas for potential new models and all company names are considered. Mr Springley has spoken about the potential for a classic range with companies from the 70’s, 80’s and even 90’s but these will need more international appeal as they will need the appeal to sell on the continent to encourage Herpa to produce them. If you have any ideas then please feel free to leave them as comments below and they will get passed on. Obviously some of the more famous names such as Astran have been suggested already but again leave any suggestions below.

The next model to come along is this Mercedes-Benz BigSpace in the livery of Irish haulier Dixon Transport. Due to be released in a few months time it will be yet another quality model that recreates the real life truck almost identically apart from a few centimetres!