Shown without the TV antenna & propane tank. A real easy build and in two sizes with a BW.

This is a good example of what's on the market these days and worth, perhaps $1000.	The Name Plate from a Trotwood Travel Trailer that was being offered on the 'net for something like $3500. It's worth about $500 tops.. The only thing going for it is that it's a 'classic'... for whatever THATs worth
Note the water damage from a leaking roof. Old (classic) RV's are cute but require a LOT of work and expenses..	If you're thinking about buying a trailer (or RV) look around a lot and make a few offers. You don't want to have to spend a lot fixing up a trashed out one like this
	(This is our present RV) Question: Do you get hassled 'boondocking' like that..BP Less so since the economic collapse, Bob. Fewer number of kops and less budget to drive around at night looking for illegally parked RVs. also.. there are no end of vacant strip malls everywhere where they kinda WANT us to stay to offer a little night security. If they DO hassle, they just ask us to leave or most often 'leave in the morning'.. It's important when you boondock,, to have your insurance, license, etc in perfect shape.. AND (oh yeah) clean up all your warrants..  Been hassled just twice this year. Two nights last week in Newport.. That's why we parted stage right.. true north :)) Probably save $5000-8000./year avoiding Kampgrounds. Our GPS directs us- turn by turn- to the next WalMart Wanna fresh blackberry?  I was telling Annikins earlier, that if times get any tougher, we'll look for a roadside blackberry patch (won't have to look hard!!), put up a card table and pick/sell fresh blackberries to the tourists..LOL

Kitchens are kinda cramped but easy to get used to. You don't really need a lot of food when you're staying at Wal-Mart. Park as level as you possibly can so the fridge works best. That's Annie over there.	Driving an RV isn't so hard to do, actually. Try and be real careful at the very start ...especially getting in and out of parking places. 'nuff said..Geico gave us the best insurance rate.. $320/year for the legal minimum
Actually, this ' Beaver' RV that was our home for 5 or 6 years- up till 2006. Now it's our winter Fiddlersgreen mobile studio parked in Apache Junction, AZ. We got it very well used for 8k and after some engine and roof work, it worked out pretty well. We took it across the USA twice without any problems. One of the best places to get a used RV in the Phoenix or Tucson area. It seems a lot of seniors go there and decide to give up RVing and fly home. You see our Westie, George, over on the left. He and our other Westie, Missie, have helped with gasoline expenses will a litter of puppies every so often. More
Chip... Pretty big carbon footprint you have there..Harry Not really HB, we get all our electricity from 6 solar panels. 11 deep storage batteries. Seldom need the generator. Interent is via wireless card. Fresh water at gas stations. Dump stations everywhere.

Roy Greenwood has built and sent us this version of his Trotwood built out of soad pop cans. It's kinda cramped but easy to get used to. You just have to think small. Be careful when you open the door, because I think it might be full of root beer!	Here's another view of the mini Trotwood. Try and be real careful at the very start if you are building one in aluminum. I always cut myself, but most everyone else finds that they are more likely to get nicked from a hobby knife when doing it out of paper. It might be possible to get "paper model hobby insurance" but I've never looked into this.
Since you mentioned the Trotwood trailer in the chat room, here is our sodacanmodels.com version of it made from A&W root beer. Regards, Roy

Other Escape Capsules:
Airstream Trailer
Pedal Car
Gypsy Caravan

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Loosing your job and home is about as sucky as it gets and I was a little unsure about how this little project would be taken..
.. so I asked a few pals what they thought:

Oh, that's a tough one. It's hard to laugh when the world is falling apart: I'd err on the side of caution and not risk offending someone with humor. Irony is often misconstrued as fact. Kel

Would someone about to lose his home really be looking at this anyway ? i think it is an interesting comment on our times and has a funny late 30s Depression nostalgia about it. No matter what we do there's always someone out there who will object. Did it stop "Harry Potter"? Will it stop anything ? Are we living in Germany, circa 1935 ? No, we're not.. So go for it. It's fun, it's hokey and it's not as though you're looking to overthrow the government. Hope this helps. Derek (our cartoonist)

I often find myself wincing when I hear something and think , How could you say that out loud? This does not raise any of those flags for me. Its not a slam its more a satirical look at things and I would think it actually could have value as a social comment.

I personally saw nothing offensive about this. Knowing Chip and his lifestyle, I just see it as an accurate reflection of the way he sees the world and chooses to live in it.m Pierre

We’re getting afraid to laugh at ourselves as a society. Times are tough for some—my wife’s job goes away this winter…but we’ll make it as long as there are SBD’s needing restoration…or something. I say go for it, even if it offends a few people. That’s what free speech is about. IF we’re afraid to say out loud what’s wrong with the country, then everyone assumes all is right. Over the past decades, we’ve gotten so afraid to offend anyone, that we’re almost afraid to say anything at all for fear of offending some group or another. I thought it was funny, a bit wry and tongue in cheek. Consider it to be the equivalent of an editorial cartoon and go with it. I like it! Rob

It's a great model! One thing to consider is that five years from now people will be wondering what you're talking about. John

Gotta agree...The disclaimer/pre-apology is a good idea...BTW: I love "...irony confused as fact." Sad statement about today...Bon courage, y'all..Wayne

Please feel free to post this diatribe on your web site or in a forum if you think it has enough value to be paSsed on. Only please do not post my email address, I do not want the increased spam load.

Thanks for the Trotwood Travel trailer. Unfortunately, it represents much of what is wrong with the United States today.
Much of Trotwood, Ohio , like much of neighboring North Dayton already is, has become a post-industrial wasteland.

Nothing is made there any more. The decent jobs are gone.

The people who owned companies found they could increase their own personal wealth by short changing the people who worked for them and outsourcing the work to places with cheaper labor. The foreign workers who made the offshored products were paid starvation wages and could not afford the products they made. That was of no concern to the company owners, since the goods could be shipped cheaply to the US and sold to the remaining people there who still had well paying jobs. The cheap shipping was dependent on low energy costs and using marginally safe, flag of convenience freighters. The plight of the workers was of no concern to the ruling classes of the country in which the products were made, as they enriched themselves with their rake off from taxes and other fees, and had no concern about the welfare of the majority of their country's citizens as long as they remained a docile exploitable work force.

However as the pace or corporate greed accelerated, more and more US jobs were outsourced, fewer and fewer Americans had the decent paying jobs which would allow them to buy the foreign made products. The overseas markets could not absorb the excess production, since the people who made them were paid starvation wages and could not afford them.

That led to an over supply of goods that no one can afford to buy and was one of the factors that triggered a global recession and which led to a further decline of wages for people employed in the industrial sector and the lower rungs of the financial sector in the US.
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However people in the upper levels of the US financial sector did great since they were feeding on the corpse of the US industrial economy, plundering pension plans, and selling off the remainder of US manufacturing capacity to overseas buyers (read China, which has no interest in seeing a strong industrial US economy, and is using the greed of the US finance people as a long term weapon against this country.)

This is not to say that in the end US labor unions did not play a role in their own downfall. Union management was corrupt, and some of the hiring practices they forced on corporations led to inefficiencies that could not be sustained. Rather than trying to co-operate and create a win-win situation as some labor associations and companies in Japan tried to do, US corporate management and labor maintained an on going hostile and ultimately self destructive relationship.

The finanical sector minority, having harvested the greater part of the wealth of the country (over 90 percent of US assets are owned by less than 5% of the population, a typical third world wealth distribution scenario. The difference in order of magnitude of pay between the lowest and highest paid employee of a US corporation also reflects a third world spread.) are able to retire to their isolated estates in remote parts of the country or their fortress like urban town-houses and live like feudal barons. All the gains the labor movement made from the 1890's to the 1960's, have been rapidly reversed, once management found it could exploit cheap non unionized foreign in countries where workers have no legal protections, and any attempt by labor to improve its situation will be quashed by government murder squads. The worst damage to the earning power of the average US citizen occurred under the Republican administrations since Ronald Reagan.

One other side effect of this shift of wealth and removal of work from the US is the precipitous decline in the quality of the US educational system. The very wealthy minority does not want to pay the taxes needed to fund a decent universal educational system, nor do they want to see an affordable good quality educational system in place, since the children of the general population would be on a more equal footing with the privately educated offspring of the wealthy.

As an aside about how this has impacted modelers. High end Plastic models have risen in cost to several times the cost of of a dinner and a movie for two, when once they were on a par with a movie ticket. On the other hand it is possible to import and sell an assembled hand painted model from a low cost of labor country for less than the cost of the same unassembled model imported from Japan. This implies much about the pay and working conditions of the model assembler.

Paper models satisfy ones creative urges, can be as simple or complex as one wants (No offense to Chip but if the Fiddler's Green models are a bit simplistic, you can get a Polish paper model with over 7000 parts) are less costly in terms of cash outlay and do less damage to the environment. I have also found that they are easier to give away than plastic models, and above all one can have a huge collection of unbuilt paper models, either digital or hard copy which it takes up comparatively little space when compared to the plastic kind. Name withheld