E Crank gas & Oil expands

When I built the little E Crank Co fuel depot I used a plastic tank kit by ratio, an English firm.  I had previously bought one of these kits and I'd started on them and salted them away for a later project. I found them again and when I "rediscovered" them I realised I could expand Crank's to use them.  I had the plastic base from the IHC Lastop Funeral Home kit which was paving and concrete with a large oblong hole in the middle.  I figured this could be used to make a bund which would add some interest.  I put together a scrapbox structure for a machinery and pump house which still needs some tech gubbins added to the rear wall. Here are the results so far. I had to make a plywood base for it so I could "engineer" the different heights.  I may have to think about replacing the wooden fence with a taller, chain link one. Mmmmm....

Damage limitation.

I've been beset by problems with my photo backscenes bubbling up from the backdrop.  Mostly due to the wrong adhesive being used thanks to a lack of tech  info from the producer.  Fair to say he replaced the scenes and offered to do so FOC. In the end I paid him a modest material covering fee and freight from the USA. Honour was satisfied as folk who trade fairly deserve to be treated fairly in return.  I had an additional problem in the fact that I didn't brace the hardboard backdrop well enough and it flexed. I tried pumping foam in the gap between it and the wall but that pushed it into a convex shape so made it worse. In the end I decided on a clean break and cut out the backdrop and foam back to bare wall and will start all over again. This time I will clad the wall with 9mm MDF board, then cover that with styrene sheeting and apply the self adhesive backscene onto that.  here's where it starts again.  There is a ton of repair work to be done once the backscene is back in place.

Pigeon loft

I recently obtained an old IHC plastic kit of the Lastop Funeral Home as I was looking for a suitable hearse and one came with this kit.  I'm building the kit pretty well as stock but with a fully dressed show window full of urns, coffins and memorials.  This will become Maudlin Undertakers  - slogan "Your Funeral is Our Pleasure". I will document that structure when I get the Grandt windows needed to upgrade it.

This little pigeon loft was one of the bits of roof detail that was included. It's a nice moulding and really only needed a cleanup and paint job. I put in a black styrene floor as you could see thorough it when looking down.  A couple of HO scale pigeons (nightmare to handle) and some bird muck complete the scene.

Revell Garage

I had this little garage lying around, I believe it came with an old plastic Revell HO farmhouse. I think the design and tooling were by the legendary Al Armitage and it fits together perfectly. I added a few details including a tiny dovecote and a few animals as I'm taking it to show my granddaughter on Thursday and she will have fun finding them all.

The garage now has a base and a service pit

Jasmine shoos away that pesky dove on washday

Dad-blamed rabbit after the carrots!

Asleep in the sun

Details

Owing to a bout of flu type illness that's knocked the whole family flat, little work has been done in the train loft.  Now I've turned the corner I got stuck in to some gentle modelling by pulling out a bunch of stuff from my unpainted details and scrap boxes and got to work. here are the results.

This was the body from a military tanker truck that I acquired with something else off ebay. A few bits from the scrapbox and it's a useful oil storage tank for somewhere.

Some graveyard furniture from bits of plaster and wood. The Celtic cross is a steering wheel glued to a plastic beam.

A wrecked Jordan buckboard.

An old Highway Miniatures Marion Steam Shovel kit tackled.

I started work on this model some years ago and put it back in the bin as it was too daunting. Absolute scale parts, few mounting guides and construction instructions written by someone who never finished the kit were enough to put me off.

I took it out the other day and determined to either build it or assemble some useful detail engineering parts.  The moulding work was classy but delicate, tiny and flimsy.

I persisted with the build, painting sub assemblies as I went and fixing tiny broken parts too. Here are some pictures of the process.