An Ebay bargain transformed

Bargain!

I bought two old Wiking HO scale trucks for a song on Ebay this week and spent a couple of hours transforming them to something useful on the layout.  One was a very shiny, bright red Deutsche Post lorry with bonus opening rear doors.  The other was a rather nondescript military support wagon of some sort.

Post lorry

I dismantled this completely taking care not to break anything important.  I took the radiator

off the bonnet and cut and filed away the central core with the Mercedes badge on.  I replaced this with an etched metal street drain cover cut down to fit and backed with black paper.  The door latch was filed down a bit and the body was masked and painted and had some packages glued inside. I cut down and painted an old Airfix figure for the driver, picked out the central windscreen frame in silver and reassembled. I built a new front fender from plastic.  A thinned paper logo for a trucking company and some weathering completed the conversion.

Military truck

This was destined for Dan's auto scrapyard.  I dismantled this completely keeping the body and chassis filler for spares. I cut out the driver's side window and put a bullet hole in the windscreen.  I cut off the radiator for my scrapbox, distressed the body work with my Dremel and lifted up one side of the bonnet (hood).  I made an "engine" and battery from scrap and fitted them.  A lot of dust and rust completed this little model.