Moral Panic! HO scale smut!

The Times’ Roger Boyes trots out some tired clichés about model railways.

Part of the attraction of model trains has always been the order of the landscape. The trains may sometimes fall off the rails but on the whole they run on time. Everything is prim and proper: the plastic fir trees are untouched by climate change; the towns are tidy clusters of gabled homes rather than slum tenements and the little people never talk back.

Clearly he’s never some of the superbly-modelled scenes of urban decay on the exhibition circuit. Yes, there are the rather dull chocolate box models of a fantasy steam era past that never really existed. But there are plenty of layouts out there with things like abandoned shopping trolleys in rivers modelled in loving detail. And who can forget the topical “No Poll Tax” graffiti on the motorway viaduct on the Model Railway Club’s “New Annington”.

But Roger Boyes visited the trade fair at Nuremberg, and his head exploded.

But visitors to the trade fair in Nuremberg have been gaping at the antics around the railway lines. Merten, which makes train-set figures, is offering a nudist beach, a waitress wearing only an apron and stockings and a couple of lascivious pole-dancers. One scene shows a man urinating against a wall, watched by a woman. Another shows a couple performing oral sex. Look carefully at the scene depicting a brothel raid and, behind the naked prostitutes, you will see the figure of a priest trying to make a quick getaway.

Hate to break it to you, Roger, but they’ve been making HO scale nudists for years. And it’s not just those wacky Germans; there’s a big O gauge British layout on the exhibition circuit with about a dozen nekkid wimmin on it.

Link from Spinneyhead