Many thanks to Kev, Alan and Dave!
I
thought I'd seen a 'dinkier' looking Bowser out there, watching through the scenes again it's definately a QL in the movie, in fact judging by the extra 'conduit' panels which hide some of the piping I think its actually a late war version pressed into Battle of Britain service for the film!
Much as I'd like to put in the proper one, as Magnus Magnusson used to say in Mastermind "I've started so I'll finish!" or, as in my case "I'M NOT STARTING ANOTHER FLAMING ONE NOW!"
So here it comes!
In
Photo 1 we have the easiest of the super detailing on the Bedford, the pair of towing shackles found at the front of the main chassis frame. These were formed in exactly the same way as the shackles on the MkIV tanks in the Messines model, namely from stretched sprue. The sprue was heated over the candle flame and stretched but before it cooled down the strand was pulled over a small drill bit held vertically in the mini vice and the two ends touched to each other, fusing together as seen in the photo leaving a ‘D’ shackle at the other end which just needs to be sliced off with the safety razor blade as seen in
Photo 2. The two shackles were then ‘spring fitted’ over the ends of the chassis and secured with a drop of liquid poly glue (making sure they both hung straight down) as shown in
Photo 3.
During the research on the web into the Bedford, I found a little detail which had been omitted on the Airfix chassis: On both sides of the front tank supports, there is a short double step ladder designed to allow the ground crew to climb up onto the side shelf and operate the swinging arms which hold the petrol hoses. These ladders were formed from an off cut of the 0.5 x 1.5mm Plastruct styrene strip as seen in
Photo 4. The main vertical bar is the full sized strip with the side bars and steps cut down from the main strip.
Photo 5 illustrates the first ladder getting it’s side bars glued in place, using the second ladder’s main strut and the rest of the off cut to support the side bars so they’re nice and level.
Photo 6 shows the left hand ladder in position, the actual treads were attached after the frame was good and solid on the tank support strut. One thing you have to watch with the ladders is to make sure that the second one is the mirror image of the first, make two the same and one will be ‘inside out’ when you go to fit it on!
Photos 3 and
6 also show off that extra filler cap placed on the fuel tank mentioned earlier. (More Youtube watching has since shown me that there's a thin locking bar on top of the cap, that'll be coming soon!)
In
Photo 7 we come to one of the more demanding procedures! The photo shows the combined driving cab floor and mudguards. Shape-wise this is fine, the problem lies in the thickness of the kit part. The various photos of the real thing show that those mudguards are really thin, in real life probably ¼ inch steel, the kit part on the other hand would work out to about two or three inches thick instead! What I did was to use the rotary tool with a grinding stone (the cylindrical type’ to very carefully grind away the thickness of the plastic (underneath) to reduce it down to a better looking finish. This was a very delicate process, a little at a time and all the while expecting the stone to come tearing its way through the soft plastic. The photos here do not show the finished result very clearly but once the cab goes on the effect should be easier to see. The ground down mudguards are seen in
Photo 8, alongside the front of the chassis. As I said, it’s difficult to see the difference in this shot but notice the dark grey ‘box’ sitting on the top of the chassis. As you might have noticed on the earlier photos, there is no moulded engine block with the kit. Now I’m not sure if the thinned down mudguards make it even more obvious, but with the cab floor in position you can see right through underneath, making it too obvious that there’s actually no engine down there! The simple solution was to use a section of sprue from the
Emhar MkIV and just to glue it down on top of the chassis (after a couple of trim backs to stop it fouling the front of the cab floor!)

It doesn’t have to look like anything ‘proper’ – it’s just there to block the gap! As you can see from this photo, the ‘detailing’ of the cab floor consists of a moulded box (possibly the gear box or something similar) and two blocks used to locate the two seats with. (Lots of scratch building to come here!)
Photo 9 illustrates the one piece of ‘detail’ that
does come with the kit, the ‘dashboard’ together with the cab front into which that part fits. Actually, as far as the dashboard goes, the original is very simple and Airfix have at least got the right number of dials and other shapes (possibly air vents?) and in the right positions too. What they didn’t bother at all with however was all of the rest of the bits and pieces necessary to drive the thing, including, incredibly, a steering wheel! That is really strange since all the other vehicles in the sets I’ve purchased for the diorama
all come with the steering wheel included (admittedly half of them won’t be in the diorama of course!) I will be having a go at scratch building a correct wheel later, annoyingly, the Matador and Fire Engine come with four spoked steering wheels whilst the Bedford has a three-er, on the other hand, I’ve just won a Bofors Gun kit on ebay which arrived a few days ago and the Morris Tractor does have a three spoke wheel – but I don’t like to ruin a whole kit just for one item so I’ll try a few scratch build versions first. Fortunately the wheel can be added on after all the rest has been built and painted so apart from the deadline there’s no great hurry for that one item.
Before starting on the cab there was one task I needed to do first – making up the windscreen and door windows, which are also missing from the kit. In
Photos 10 and
11 you can see the procedure for making these up. First job, using a newly sharpened pencil is to mark the four corners of the windscreen onto a piece of thin card. Fortunately the Bedford’s windscreens are of the flat ‘Landrover’ type, although, as you can make out, they are not true rectangles like the ‘Rover but slightly angled, sloping down towards the sides of the cab. The glass itself was cut from a fairly thick sheet of clear plastic, I’ve no recollection of where I got this from, I don’t think it was a bought sheet, it seems to be more like the kind of sliding partition that comes in some cheapie tool boxes – I just hope I don’t need that box one day!

The first window fitted perfectly first time and you’d think the second would just be a mirror image of the first – so did I but it took three attempts before one would fit in the frame. In
Photo 11 the glass panes are just resting in the cab front, one does look as if it has a gap but it will go down tighter when pressed in place. Again like the Landrover, these windscreens are separate to the body of the cab and are designed to hinge outwards for ventilation. Come to think of it, since the Bedford came first, it’s actually the Landrover which is like the Bedford!
In
Photo 12 we have the two cab side doors with their own windows. Fitting these will be a lot easier than the windscreens as Airfix haven’t put in the vertical bar which splits the window into two, the wind down main part and the smaller triangular front bit. Once I have added those bars, the glass will be further cut down so that the main windows are partly wound down to improve the ‘in use’ effect.
Now we come to the most enjoyable part of the cab – fitting in all the missing details! For the reference photos I turned to the web again, using both photos of some other larger scale models of the QL and perhaps even more useful, some shots of ‘scrapyard’ Bedfords in the process of being lovingly restored by very talented Military Vehicle enthusiasts. One of the best was a video by rockola59 on Youtube showing his Bedford QL Army lorry version from rusting to bits in a scrapyard to driving along continental roads to a Military Vehicle meeting looking like it just came off the factory floor! Highly recommended for all those little cab details especially.

Most of the following additions came from those pics apart from the foot pedals which are pure conjecture on my part as I couldn’t find any photos of the ruddy floor!(At least, not until after I'd made mine up!)
Photo 13 shows the first of the new bits – the three foot pedals – brake, clutch and accelerator – every manual vehicle needs those don’t they? And the steering column for the missing steering wheel. The pedals were cut down from Plastruct styrene strip and the steering column was from Plastruct 1.2mm rod and an off cut of thin plasticard.
Next in line came the housing for the three gear sticks? Three levers of some sort anyway and the additional details on the top and side wall of the moulded casing. Plastruct strip provided the housing sides whilst the other details were cut from various thicknesses of plasticard sheet. These can be seen in
Photo 14, (before being sanded back smooth). Moving on to
Photo 15, the smaller section of the triple lever box has been roofed in with more plasticard sheet and the rearward facing extension to the casing has been sanded down from a strip of plasticard which was itself a thin strip sliced off one of my thickest sheets of the material (about 2mm thick I think), this was the strip I cut to form the lintels in the red brick wall (but you haven’t seen that yet!) After all of that was completely dried, the edges of the box walls were sanded smooth using a strip of medium sandpaper glued on to a lollipop stick and then it was time to make the actual levers themselves. If you remember the construction of the wickerwork trench linings in the Messines build, I was left with loads of ends of stretched sprue – too thick at the ends for the wickerwork but never thrown away (something I think all modellers eventually become – HOARDERS!)

These scrap bits are just the right thickness however for the gear levers. In
Photo 16 you can see them under construction. The ends of the previously snipped off sprue were very slowly brought close to a candle flame as they were when the sprue was stretched but this time the object was to slowly melt the tips until they formed a bulbous end to simulate the gear knob. Do this too close to the flame and the plastic will simply melt and droop, just keep getting closer and closer to the flame until you see the tip begin to swell up – then remove quickly. Any really young modellers will need some adult help or supervision for this procedure! Three of the levers were formed this way, the fourth one is actually the hand brake. This one (at the bottom of the group) was first heated to produce the ‘bulb’ and then quickly squeezed with tweezers to flatten the round bulb. After just a few seconds to cool, the shape of the hand grip was trimmed down with the razor blade.
Photo 17 shows all of the above additions in place with the final
Photo 18 also having the two seats just placed in position. One word of warning – when using photos off the web for information, always use the ones of the actual vehicle as the final check – I fitted that handbrake in after looking at a photo of a resin kit (1/35 I think) and it was only after having another look at the full sized vehicle under restoration that I realised (although in hindsight it was obvious) that they’d put the handbrake in backwards on that model! It’s also on backwards in my photos too – although it’s now the right way round!
In the next instalment I’ll be finishing off the cab detailing with the side doors (including the tiniest little window winders I’ve ever made) and gluing the back on before priming everything.
Happy Modelling until then!
Robin
Plymouth57 attached the following image(s):
First wooden ship:
The Grimsby 12 Gun 'Frigate' by Constructo Second:
Bounty DelPrado Part Works Third:
HMS Victory DelPrado Part Works 1/100 scale
Diorama of the Battle of the Brandywine from the American Revolutionary War Diorama of the Battle of New Falkland (unfinished sci-fi), Great War Centenary Diorama of the Messines Ridge Assault
Index for the Victory diary is on page 1