Introduction
MiniArt as a company excel as providers of diorama elements, and this release from them is just such a set. Providing a selection of small carts from well into the past, to the current day.
Review
This offering from MiniArt arrives in an end opening card tray, which as you know I am not a fan of due to the risk of crushing of the parts inside. Inside is a single plastic bag containing five sprues with one cart on each sprue. I am sure I have seen some of these element provided in other releases, but with that said all of the sprues are clean, and beyond care when removing parts from the sprue - no issues should be encountered.
The offerings inside this set are covered as follows:
A wooden cradle carriage, which is a very old design of carriage, which sometimes includes steerable front wheels. The bigger cousins and brother of this cart would be seen being drawn behind cart horses and loaded to the heavens with hay and straw. The design of this aspect is very good, right down to the metal banded wooden wheels. The front wheels being smaller than the rear, which is something often seen is this design, although I do not know the reason for this specific attribute.
Next up we have an early period wheel barrow, this has been provided with a wooden structure, a single metal banded wooden wheel and a metal bucket. A market barrow in also included in the set, and this basically allowed someone to move their wares from one place to another to sell them directly from the barrow. This offering even includes a simple sprung suspension, something that I can not recall seeing previously.
The next two items I am going to list together as one is a porters barrow, the type where you place a blade under a large object, the tilt it back on its centre of gravity making it easier to move. The other is a similar design, but older in that you would lift an object on to it and then tilt it forward to unload it. This sort of barrow falls in the middle of a porter’s barrow and a wheel barrow.
Conclusion
This is one of those nice sets from MiniArt where you pick individual aspects out of it, and use in more than one build. It has a nice mix of elements, were all of them could be used for the 1900s through to the 1950/60s and some could be used from a much earlier period, while one is of a design that could still be used today.