Army Men in unlikely places

I know fellow blogger Mark at Man of Tin blog Two often posts updates on his blog when he finds army men or toy soldiers appearing in tv-series or movies. By coincidence I recently found some Army Men in a very unlikely tv-series. I'm actually not very interested in football, but when Norway was going to meet England in The World Championship in football I just had to watch the match. When approaching our tv, I noticed that the present channel was 'nickelodeon junior' showing Barbapa. -with Army Men (!). This was a very unlikely setting so I made some quick screenshots before zapping to The World Championship.

The Barbapapas were playing with traditionally toys together, including some Army Men. 

This was as far as I could catch not a very favorable episode for 'Army Men' as the Barbapapa who played the little soldiers eventually used them to dominate the others play...

...until another of the Barbapapa children brought robots and dinosaurs to finally take them out. - and invented a wargame (?). I've considered Barbapapa for being 'politically correct' tv for children, so I found this setting was somewhat a little surprising. Perhaps that's why they looked so less offensive only being armed with binoculars, radios or flags. Some of the poses looked familiar:

Inspired by a Matchbox American WW2 Infantry? 

Inspired by Airfix Russian WW2 Infantry? 

And the match? That was an exiting and very close one. Congratulations 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 !!

Visiting Miniature Kingdom

On our way home after visiting Djurhedens Garden Railway, we took a little detour in the area to check if there were any updates on the public model railway Miniature Kingdom in Kungsör. I was there during a motorcycle tour in the summer of 2024 as well. Miniature Kingdom is a kind of Swedish equivalent to 'Miniatur Wunderland'; a public model railway with more than 700 meters of rails focusing on iconic Swedish landscape and a lot of recognizable Swedish signature elements. There were a lot of people visiting The Miniature Kingdom while we was there, but we were early so that's why it looks 'empty' on my photos below:

A 'model of the model'

I've seen on the Miniature Kingdom's FB page that they're currently working on some new projects which includes the Swedish Airforce Museum in Linköping and was curious to see that live. It seems like they're building their new projects elsewhere and bring them to the layout when ready to mount. So unfortunately I didn't see the model of the Swedish Airforce Museum this time (which is a reason to go back sometime). They had completed what was work in progress when I was there in 2024 though; the County of Värmland with it's Canals and Locks:

In this yellow building it used to be an annual model railway exhibition IRL in Mellerud 

Since I was there last they had also upgrades in the County of Södermansland:

In Södermansland they had also included parts of the Femöre Coastal Fortress:

When I looked through my photos from this visit I saw that I actually had taken many similar photos as from my previous visit 2 years earlier, so it's obviously what is my favorite scenes. I found a medieval tournament I haven't noticed before:

I made a YouTube-video to capture some of my impressions and those long ore trains in Northern Sweden which runs to Narvik in Norway:

I'm intrigued by that many of the more than 400 iconic buildings in Miniature Kingdom are 3D-printed. - And especially since they're filament printed on an FDM printer. They're obviously 3D-printed in parts, and assembled as regular kits:

19800 visitors in 2025 alone is impressive for an attraction like this. Not as exact statistic, but you can put a pin on a map (of Sweden) where you're from,and it looks like there have been a increasing number of visitors since I was there in 2024:

The Swedish layout of Miniature Kingdom is about 200 square meters today, and it's planned to expand further 120 square meters. So it should be no excuses not to visit this great layout in the future.

Blog PostScript

Just 3 days after our visit, the new Linköping modules with the Swedish Airforce Museum was installed at Miniature Kingdom...
-This is so 'Murphy's Law'...

So it looks like there will just have to be another revisit to Miniature Kingdom some time in the future...

Visiting Djurhedens Järnväg - Djurheden Garden Railway

In June a small detachment from out Model Railway Club, Gleng, went to a weekend-trip to Sweden when Helena & Roger invited fellow Garden Railway modellers to get-togheter in their lovely garden in Djura where they have built a most beautiful, scenic and very detailed Garden Railway with many cameos; Djurhedens Järnväg (Railway) with some 140 meter of mainline. 

It was raining more or less through the our day out, but it didn't stop us from running trains. More than 20 people attended to this get-togheter. These trains or locomotives was 3D-printed:

It's a more than 400 km drive to get there and we were 4 members in our car, so it was limited how many trains we were able to bring. I brought my German military Heeresfeldbahn diesel to haul my Pioneer Ferry Load: 

It looks like Pettson and Findus are discussing this military presence:

Here are some other trains running this day:

When it started to rain even more heavily it was time for a break and Helena invited to cake, coffee and hotdog in their garden-tent:

The rainy weather made the look of running of live-steam engines even more spectacular due to more visible steam: 

It's not that easy to notice but if you see inside one of my rubber dinghys you get an idea of how much (rain-) water it collected through this running session:

Here is a YouTube video of this great day out:

Djurhedens Järnväg is open for the public on specific dates during the summer and at Christmas, which are announced on Helena's and Roger's website; Djurhedens Järnväg. A visit to this beautiful Garden Railway and friendly people is highly recommended.

Thank you for your invitation and hospitality Helena and Roger!