Some of you may have seen a few issues ago when I constructed the paved area on my O Scale goods yard (well I hope you did!). The paved area looked a bit empty, so I browsed around for any suitable vehicles with which to populate the layout.
One of the options was to use 1/48th scale plastic kits such as those available from Tamiya. Although these are military vehicles, on a post war layout using them doesn’t present any problem due to large amounts of equipment and vehicles being available as surplus at the end of the conflict.
The vehicle I chose to use is a Tamiya 1/48 scale British Light Utility Car, this is a military conversion of a pre-war small car into what was known as a ‘Tilly’ (short for Utility). This was perfect to use as a small goods delivery truck.
After general construction as per the instructions, a small modification was made to meet the future use of the Tilly. The back of the cab is normally open to allow movement between it and the rear deck. This was filled in with a thin piece of plasticard to seal off the cab from the load area.
Now onto the load, cabbages! Faller does a nice selection of HO/OO cabbages and cauliflowers (FA181257). These are nice super-sized German vegetables that I thought looked perfect for O Scale.
The cauliflowers come with a spike on the bottom for planting them in a field, these were cut off so to fit into the crates. Just a small dot of PVA on the bottom to keep them in place once they were in position.
The Tilly was still looking a bit too clean, so with some watered-down brown and black paint it was given a wash over. The paint naturally collects in all the nooks and crannies so gives the feel of a working vehicle not one just fresh out of the paint shop.
With the vegetable load filling the back of the Tilly, its ready for use.
The Tamiya kit came up nicely and the size of the vehicle fits very well with O Scale. All that I need now is a suitable name to go on a roof board, answers on a post card to rightlines@gaugemaster.com (keep them clean!)