Back to the past!

 A small model to get me started again.

I haven't done any modelling for over a year due mainly to the scourge of osteo-arthritis and operations. (One more at least to go). I've missed spending time up in the loft building the railroad and it is in a sorry state at present so I will be embarking upon a major cleanup and fix in the near future, especially as my eldest granddaughter Jasmine has been bugging me to show her the trains again and half term beckons.

Online looking at a collection of old photos, I found these two and decided that this would be a challenging little project to get the modelling juices flowing again. But which one do I choose? Yep it has to be the really hard little house on wheels. 

So Here we go, I make no promises that it will end up a success as the dormer is a beast in this size.

The model:

First up, I needed a truck of some sort and I settled upon an old Jordan Ford kit from my store.  I needed the chassis and bonnet (hood) and wheels plus some detail bits. The body of the "house" will be styrene siding offcuts from the scrap drawer. 

I studied the picture and planned the model extensively..... Er, I thought about the best way to build it and hoped for the best.  It's a sort of build as you go project and if it works - great, if not, I'm sure a scrapyard in Cuspidor can make use of it.

The first job was to slice off the cab at the firewall, this was done with a razor saw and cleaned up with emery paper and files.

Next I shortened the rear chassis rails by a foot or so and then ground off the non-scale axle holders (that lump on the crossrails).

I cut short the cab floor and took off the running boards.

Then I cut the base for the floor and glued it and the cab floor to the chassis.

I drew up and cut out the walls from scribed siding and added trim corner boards.

I'll spare you the details of assembling the walls, it was tedious, fiddly and  pesky.  Making a box with thin styrene cut small is not my idea of fun. I cut out appropriate holes and added a glazed Grandt Line caboose door and an oriole window, which I felt gives it a suitable air of joix de vivre.  Here are the sub-assemblies with a touch of sap green acrylic and some dust. The dust indicates the sloppy chaos that my work space turns into all by itself.

I cut out and glued a suitable sub roof and then attached the dormer front to the top of the cab. This was a bit tricky but I glued some glazing to the back of the dormer and then attached it in place with canopy glue.

The next challenge is to build the glazed dormer sides. Frankly I'm dreading it but we'll see how that goes........