A VISIT TO SMALLSPACE 13

 Some photos from Smallspace 13, which took place in Hanslope village hall on Sunday, 12^th July, 2026.

Plenty of model displays, along with a fair few dealers. This year there was also a visit by members of the British Interplanetary Society who brought along a Soyuz docking simulator that attendees could try their hand at being a space pilot!

I had to try my luck and probably by luck rather than judgement I managed to dock my Soyuz capsule to the International Space Station!

The model displays are always the draw for me, but more important to that is meeting up with old friends, fellow modellers and collectors.

David Sisson displayed a couple of original filming props from Gerry Anderson’s ‘Space Precinct’.

This is the top section, that David is currently restoring of the Demeter City Police Department space station.

In the series the Space Precinct space station orbits the planet Altor which is the location of Demeter City, deemed ‘the crime capital of the galaxy’!

Another original Space Precinct prop displayed was this ‘Astrovan’, or Military Intelligence Surveillance Van to give it it’s proper title. This prop was used in ‘Deathwatch’, the last 2 episodes of the series. The model, built by Chris Trice in 1995 contains several motorised moving parts, which remarkably still work after all this time.

Another familiar name amongst sci-fi modelling enthusiasts is Andy Preston. We got the chance to see Andy’s highly impressive USS Enterprise refit model.

Andy also displayed his model of the Project Hail Mary, from the film of the same name.

You could even buy a rather good resin model of ‘Rocky’ from Tirydium Models.

Andy was presented with the award for best model in show. Here’s Andy on the right, being presented with the award by Jerry Stone of the B.I.S. and Mike Tucker of the Model Unit,

Vaughan Herriot had a small display of his normally huge collection of puppet creations on sale. Vaughan certainly has a talent for creating perfect replicas of all, and I mean all of the puppet characters seen in Gerry & Sylvia Anderson’s TV series. Here's Vaughan with his son , Nathan in the background. What that poor boy has to put up with!

Here's some photos of his puppet replicas.

Scott Tracy at Thunderbird 1's controls.

Bob Meddings

Destiny Angel

Vaughan also added a puppet of that smeg head, Rimmer from Red Dwarf!

Vaughan is a bit of a character, himself!

Here he is photobombing this snap taken by David Sisson of Will Osbourne and myself.

Here's a less photobombed photo of Will and myself. Regular Blog readers should be familiar with Will's contributions and comments.

Full sized Daleks are always guaranteed to invade any Smallspace. While some can be manned by operators, this excellent example is totally remote controlled.

I was particularly impressed by this beautiful toy Dalek model as it was seen on the front covers of the Dalek books of the 1960’s, and made to order by Grant Holdworth of Blake’s Heaven. This is something I’d really love to add to the collection.

Some more of Grant’s beautiful toy Dalek creations. The red Marx Dalek, and the talking Palitoy.

For good measure we also had a couple of life size Cyberman on display.

This highly detailed pair of Battlestar Galactica Vipers and the Buck Rogers Starfighter were built by Sanjay Rampal.

Adam Dryer created these scratch-built spacecraft, the blue one he christened ‘The Pillar of Persuasion’, and a grey example titled, ‘Mandrake Free Runner’.

There was a large display of Space models including this lovely model of Skylab, and the Artemis capsule.

 

Richard Ashton brought along a model of the re-imagined Thunderbird 1 from a 2005 proposed CGI  series which thankfully never happened. Although Richard has done a great job putting the model together, the gaudy design isn’t for me.

A more appealing model, on Richard’s table was this large Stingray. I for one am always happy to see examples of the super sub on display.

There was also a small tribute to the late Brian Johnson.

David Sisson had a 22” Eagle and a photo of Brian with fellow special effects supervisor, Nick Allder as part of his display, and Simon Rhodes displayed one of the original (surviving?)Nuclear dome props, and the Pilot Ship, both seen in the Space: 1999 two-parter, ‘The Bringers of Wonder.'

The photos I've taken show just a small selection of stalls and displays of which there were plenty more. The event only lasts a few hours, and time as they say, goes fast when you’re having fun!

Here’s to the next one.