Rocket and Launch Pad
Built by Robin Schoolar in January 2026
From the Space Centre set.
This was a second-hand purchase, already assembled by its original owner, but not that carefully. I was reluctant to dismantle, as looking almost but not quite entirely unlike a Saturn V ready for launch, it makes an eye-catching table-filler for shows. However, it was a real nuisance to store and was getting dusty.
This model isn’t often found in UK, because it was never marketed here (I suspect not in Europe either), so buying must have involved shipping from the US.
So, in hope of making storage easier, I decided to make it easy to split the tower and rocket in two and reassemble again, mostly using rods and translucent rod grips. This involved swapping a 12½” Braced Girder for a 7½”. Even though the only 7½” part I had in about the right colour (quite nicely repainted before I bought it) was double-braced and closed-ended, rather than single-braced and open-ended, it blends in surprisingly well — see if you can spot it.
I then discovered there is Really Useful Box (what a brand name!), intended for rolls of wrapping paper, one of which would neatly hold both this and my American steam locomotive, so making them splitable became superfluous. But I kept the feature because having access from the middle made construction so much easier.
I didn’t like the original design around the transition between large and small diameter, where it ended up gappy where the curved plates finish, and it lacked internal structure, so the rocket kept acquiring an ugly bend in that area, which I found hard to explain away by saying it was a side-effect of warp drive.
My solution ended up surprisingly complicated — four flexible seats and eight flexible metal strips packed into a cramped space, which proved tricky to assemble. (If anyone rebuilds it better, please share details). However, now it’s done, it looks better without that ugly gap, and it stays straight.