The Straco Layout, Part 9 - Suburban Sprawl

Good thing most of the assembly is slotted.
The roof is just glued on. None of the six houses
have their roofs attached exactly centered.

I've already shared some observations of the big toy train meet in York, PA. But I haven't talked much about what I bought. In a box of junk parts, I found some curious structures. The price was right, so I made the purchase. Dad could use most of the odds and ends in the box, and I got six small houses.

As I say, I know virtually nothing about them, save that they're probably Japanese. How can I tell?

Well, the age seems right. These seem to be easily forty-plus years old. And in the 1960's inexpensive everything came from Japan (just like it comes from China today). The houses all have a very curious construction. Each corner is slotted so that the pieces slip together. They're also glued, of course.

A blue-roofed example. The blue paint didn't
hold up as well as the red (see below).

My suspicious is that the wood was stamped with a cutter. The windows are all slightly indented, which also suggest stamping.

The roofs are two different colors (I have two with blue roofs and four with red roofs) but otherwise all six houses are identical. There are no markings anywhere on them.

But Dad thought they'd look good on the Straco layout, so I picked them up. They do seem to fit in. The scale (and I use that term loosely) is about right, and I like the idea of filling out the layout with other Japanese accessories.

If anyone has any information about these houses (or perhaps can forward this post to someone who does), I would really like to find out more about them!
The next step: paving the pegboard Paradise.

Read more about the whole project here.

From the bottom you can see
how the sides fit together.