screwdriver and then carefully pulling apart components. The “glass” was re- moved with the help of a blunt wooden toothpick. Every truck had its driver’s side window cut away to better see in- side. More of that clear plastic was cut away overhead to insure clearance for the drivers’ heads because a secondary goal of this project was to make the fig- ures accompanying the trucks look natural and unique. Each truck got a gas tank filler neck. of a short length of .025″
The tip
styrene rod was momentarily dipped into a drop of thick cyanoacrylate. When the glue set, that end was chopped off squarely with a razor blade, leaving a narrow rim for the edge of the gas cap. The rod was bent, painted and glued in a hole drilled on the passenger side of the cab. Simulated chains secured the pickup tailgates. Forty links/inch is the small- est chain I found. It is much too heavy. As an experiment I braided four strands of very fine wire salvaged from earbud headphones.
The painted
Mutual details Due to wartime
restrictions the
trucks’ appearances changed little if at all between 1941 and 1946. The “new- er” models are five years old on the 1950 NEB&W. The rest could be turn- ing ten years old or just run harder, so there was a nice range for trying weathering effects.
The mostly plastic models are easily disassembled using a small Phillips
braids pass for lightweight chains. Online prototype photos provided plenty of examples for weathering. Acrylics applied by brush were sealed with Krylon®
flat finish. All trucks got
appropriate license plates created with GIMP, a free open source graphics pro- gram available at:
http://www.gimp.org.
Beat up red pickup
By 1950 milk cans began to be phased out in the East. At the same time many dairies were consolidated. Squeezed in the middle, most small dairies probably could not readily switch to bulk tanks so the bruised truck continued hauling milk cans for a hardscrabble farm.
Besides its already crumpled
bumper, this heavily used truck lost a hubcap, a detail picked out from a pho- to. That wheel was scrounged from an- other Classic Metal Works truck. The tailgate (a piece of .020″ styrene) hangs down for unloading or loading milk cans. The cans are Scale Structures Ltd. No. 2277 (package of eight). How many cans? A little hunting found that slightly more than 11,000 dairies in Vermont produced about 1.75 billion gallons of milk in 1950. About half of that was shipped as fluid milk or cream. Ten gallon cans were the most common size. Eight and five gallon cans were also used. Cream cans were smaller at
four, eight, ten or
twelve quarts. Whatever size, that was a lot of cans!
How many cans could the weary
pickup handle? Restoration websites showed that the model Chevies with their 115 inch wheelbase represent half ton pickups. An empty ten gallon can weighed about 30 pounds and held around 85 pounds of milk. If the farmer pushed it, the faded red truck could carry ten full cans.
A period photo inspired the mini scene with this truck. The farmer’s clothes are much cleaner than expected thanks to the photo and to my wife pointing out dairy workers had to keep everything es- pecially clean. His arms were cut off at his shoulders, turned inward 90 degrees and lowered enough for his hands to grab the can handles. He got a new head because his first one was a round blob. While at it, he sports a bowl haircut like in the photo. His wife catches a well de- served short nap in the cab.
Farmer’s green pickup
After discovering the weight of just ten milk cans, double checking the ap- ple load seemed prudent. Sure enough
RAILROAD MODEL CRAFTSMAN
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