Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Wed Sep 15, 2021 4:00 pm

With my first demo in a few years (my first exhibition in any form in a few years actually) coming up in a few weeks*, I thought it an idea to do a couple of in progress lorries as a change to all the finished stuff I usually drag along to this sort of thing.

Both are Langley kits and were chosen for absolutely no other reason than they popped up cheaply on ebay!  OK they were a little interesting anyway and i thought the dumpy little Dodge 5 ton tipper truck was kinda cute.  The Milk tanker is a Leyland Beaver and both hail from the end of the 40s so they would likely be pretty tired by the time they reach Brettell Road. The make do and mend attitude of the Black Country would mean they might soldier on for that long but the impending Motor Vehicles (Tests) Regulations of 1960 must mean their days are likely numbered!

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*see here https://p4newstreet.com/category/news/
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Sat Nov 27, 2021 12:55 pm

Bit of a mixed bag this time,  Ive been raiding the toy box again!

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Starting with the Commer BF. Available as an ancient Lesney toy it came in 2 types, a TV repair van and a food truck with open sides. The wheels were replaced with RTI ones and the central pillar in the windscreen filed down as far as I dared. I increased the width of the door window and added the bodyside detail from 10 thou microstrip.

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Next up the good old Corgi MAN cab.  I fancied something a little different so I converted it to the longer cab version. It sits on an Oxford diecast chassis.

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Remember the Tiny City police van I did? At the time I mentioned they also did a decent looking ambulance and this is it. I removed the Hong Kong markings. Painted the window frames black and the blue lights were given a coat of Tamiya clear blue (as supplied they were clear).  I figured since I work for the ambulance service I probably should have one somewhere. Don't worry I'm not planning any car crash cliché scenes!

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Finally the little Langley models Dodge tipper. As suggested I swapped the lights for some smaller ones (again RTI)
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!

Terry Bendall
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby Terry Bendall » Sun Nov 28, 2021 9:50 am

All very nice Jim. Looks like the Dodge tipper is an acknowledgement to Mr. Horn of baseboard fame. :)

Terry Bendall

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Sun Nov 28, 2021 12:12 pm

Yup. Most of the factories on the backscene are named after my fab operating team. Needed to get Tim in there somewhere too after all his assistance.
Jim Smith-Wright

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Over thinking often leads to under doing!

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Triode
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby Triode » Sun Nov 28, 2021 1:32 pm

Smashing work as always.

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Mon Nov 29, 2021 3:17 pm

Just a couple of pictures of the 2 older vehicles in the last post making themselves at home on Brettell Road.

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Jim Smith-Wright

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Over thinking often leads to under doing!

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Triode
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby Triode » Tue Nov 30, 2021 5:26 pm

They look right at home. The van will get mucky driving through that mud though! :mrgreen:

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Tue Oct 10, 2023 10:13 am

While the somewhat uninteresting work behind the scenes for taking Brettell Road out was going on I did distract myself from it with a few road vehicles to maintain a semblance of sanity.

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The Leyland Beaver milk tank I've featured before in an unfinished state. It had kind of stalled for a while but now I have finished it off.  This is a Langley Models kit.

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On the subject of Langley models I picked up this 4 wheel dolly from ebay for next to nothing. Thinking it looked like the sort of thing that could be found lying around at a steelworks, I though it would make a nice bit of background clutter.

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On to New Street - These 2 are 3d printed kits from CMAC Models.  On the left a VW Jetta and on the right a Lada Riva Estate.  Nice kits, I recommend them.

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Ive recently managed to get myself involved in one of Iain Rice's old layouts, Cades Green.  The layout has been rescued by the Norfolk area group of the Scalefour society and turned from a home layout into an exhibit-able one. Its first show in its revised form was at Scaleforum back in September.  One thing that stood out to me were the road vehicles, not only was there a bus on a bridge but they were tipped straight from a box! I guess Iain never managed to get round to them?

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Given that they were straight from a box, and Iain hadn't done anything to them, there weren't any real qualms in me taking them away to have a fiddle.  Its not like I would be messing with Iains work after all.  The above is an Oxford Diecast Commer van given the basic treatment of darkening the window frames and a bit of weathering. I changed the tyres as the originals went all sticky.  Ive had this happen before and it seems completely random as to why it does. Any ideas?

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Next up the offending bus on a bridge - Original Omnibus Bristol L5.  There was a bit more to do to this one. The glazing was just too far recessed for the black edge trick to work on its own, so that would all need to be redone.  The wheels where a nice rendition of the type found on a Routemaster but not right for an L5 .  There were no indicators or tail lights and the destination box was nothing more that printed on.  Results are below.

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Links

https://www.langleymodels.co.uk/awd1/

https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/m0rris122 CMAC Models (Ive linked to their Ebay page as they seem to have more stuff on there than their website)
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!

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barrowroad
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby barrowroad » Tue Oct 10, 2023 3:37 pm

Hi Jim, A nice set of vehicles but, assuming it is still used for carrying milk, I'm not sure I would like any milk carried in a vehicle in that dirty rub down state. :D

Robin

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Tue Oct 10, 2023 4:13 pm

Its cleaner than most of the rail tanks Robin :)
Jim Smith-Wright

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Over thinking often leads to under doing!

John Palmer
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby John Palmer » Tue Oct 10, 2023 6:24 pm

Very interested to see what can be accomplished with that Corgi Original. We need a model of LHT 917 (new in October 1948) in the colours of Bristol Omnipotent, and LHT 911 survives and can be used as a reference point for the project. I already have to hand a Corgi L5 for this purpose, and since it is in red and cream livery I'm disposed to breaking it down into its components prior to stripping it and repainting into the correct livery. This should make it possible to reduce the depth of the bodywork ribs, which appear to be too pronounced, and may facilitate the addition of the required central pillar to the rear window. I'd really like to find some way of thinning the diecast bodywork but can't see a controlled means of achieving this, so will probably have to follow the same route as you have taken. Could you say what material have you used for the glazing please, Jim? I have in mind 0.5mm PETG but am wide open to persuasion there is some more suitable material. Interesting to note that you disapproved of the wheels - I didn't think the Corgi ones looked bad, but in any case I have obtained a replacement set specifically intended for the L.

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Tue Oct 10, 2023 6:47 pm

Hi John

You're right about the ribs but in this case I wanted to preserve the livery. For glazing I use the plastic parkside kits come in these days. The window frames were wizard square rod (for point rodding) and microstrip.

Cheers

Jim
Jim Smith-Wright

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Over thinking often leads to under doing!

John Palmer
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby John Palmer » Wed Oct 11, 2023 1:17 am

Many thanks, Jim, that's useful to know.

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Mon Oct 23, 2023 9:43 am

While at Scaleforum with Cades Green it was mentioned that Iain had a Lesney Weatherill Loader that he intended to do something with for the layout.  Given my fascination with doing stuff with things from the toy-box this was pretty much an irresistible project to have a look at.

Weatherill Hydraulic

Weatherill were not a company I was aware of before now. F. E. Weatherill Limited was founded the late 1940s in North London before moving to Welwyn Garden City in the mid 50's. Mr F.E. Weatherill was formerly of another similar company Chaseside.  Their machines were generally built around Ford components but later moved to Perkins and later still Leyland Engines. Chaseside used cable operation and F.E. Weatherill had tried to get Chaseside to look at the Hydraulic route for their machines but Chaseside weren't interested. The lineage from cable operation to hydraulic was somewhat apparent in the layout of the earlier Weatherill machines.

By the late 70s Weatherill were struggling, They could not match the prices of machines imported from Scandinavia, Japan and the USA. They met with the UK government to ask for protection of UK manufacturers but that plea fell on deaf ears.  They downsized and closed the Welwyn Garden City factory, moving to Tottenham where the plan was to focus on smaller high lift two-wheel drive rigid loaders but they couldn't carve out a market for these and in the mid '80s the firm closed down.

Lesney

It seems strange then that Lesney would be all that interested in producing toys of Weatherill loaders but they produced 3 in total.  A big factor in this could be that the Weatherill Factory and the Lesney factory were next door to each other!  Of the 3 toys produced 2 were the same 2H loader.  The difference being that the first was to 1:75 scale (the yellow one), and the second (the orange one) was larger, no doubt to fit the standard sized box.  The third toy was a later design and part of the larger 'Superkings' range.

The Model

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I've bashed quite a lot of toys into something a little more accurate over the years but I admit I had to look quite hard to see the potential in this one. In the end only the main body was usable with the cab and the diecast driver being cut away.  It was painted in something that resisted all efforts to remove it including dunking it in cellulose thinners overnight!

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So out with the microstrip mainly. The driving wheels were from a JCB kit and the front wheels from my box of things that might be useful one day, Paragon models I think.  The shovel was knocked up from bits of brass using photos as a guide.

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The finished result.

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In its new home on Cades Green.  It seemed quite popular with the Kids at the Uckfield Show this weekend.
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!

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jim s-w
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Re: 1980's cars and other road vehicles

Postby jim s-w » Wed Feb 14, 2024 4:11 pm

A small selection of Lorries have recently been completed. Starting with...

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A leyland LAD cab and chassis, destined for a wagon load on Brettel Road. The cab is Base toys with some minor tweaks and windows added to the rear.  I was aiming for a new vehicle being delivered and wanted an open chassis.  The source for this was a cheap Langley Models kit for a Guy Otter/  The chassis was shortened and wheels are from RTI.

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Some of you may remember this.  A Mercedes 407 van from the Corgi School bus.  Ive carried the unmolested one around for a while now from when I did a short stint on demos on modelling road vehicles.  A picture of one of these in the form of a low sided light lorry appeared on Western Thunder so I decided to do something with it

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The Body is from the previously mentioned Langley kit mated to a Base Toys chassis and more RTI wheels. I need a spot of work with a sheet of sandpaper on a flat surface to get it to sit properly.  This will be a reasonably old vehicle on New Street.

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Next up over to Norfolk and a couple of Lorries for North Elmham.  Tim provided a few images of vehicles that could be found lurking around the dairy so I set to work. The first is an Albion something or other (I don't know - I just copied what I saw) using a modified Base Toys cab with a scratchbuilt dropside body.  The transfers are home brewed on decal paper.

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A Bedford S type from an RTI cab and wheels again with a scratchbuild body.  I'll leave the many milk churns these 2 will need up to Tim and John.
Jim Smith-Wright

http://www.p4newstreet.com

Over thinking often leads to under doing!


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