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.