passed through various small communities on the way to his birthplace in Brownfield, Maine. Invariably, those towns had a war memorial prominently lo- cated at the town center, at a crossroads, or displayed at a similar important point. While most of these monuments re- flected participation and sacri- fice in the Civil War, all of them reminded the viewer that our way of life does not come with- out a cost.
Fish Truck The idea for this model start-
ed with a stop at a local seafood restaurant here in South China, Maine. Mike Marois tries to sup- port local fishermen by selling their products. He has a dis- tinctive business card showing a lobster meeting its fate, sit- ting in a boiling pot and down- ing a last beer. I took a couple of his cards with the idea that, with a little creative cutting and pasting, literally, I might come up with signs for the fish box. The red color of the crustacean pretty well matched the livery of a 1/43 scale, 1942 Ford pickup truck sitting on my layout, so I was off and running.
My first step was to make the truck a bit safer. Accordingly, I added two rearview mirrors. I used a hole punch to create styrene disks, which I glued to round styrene rods and inserted into holes drilled into each side door. I pretty well matched the paint with Floquil Caboose Red and colored the mirror surfac- es with a silver Sharpie mark- er — easy. I also added a wind- shield wiper on the driver’s side by simply soldering a couple of pieces of wire together, darken- ing it with gun blackener, and placing it in a hole drilled be- low the windshield. The truck bed box was just as simple to construct.
I cut sides and ends from very thin pieces of plywood, probably no thicker than 0.020
AUGUST 2015 93
inches. For my ‘42 Ford, the box is 4½-feet wide by 8-feet long, but obviously, if you’re going to make one of these, fit it to your vehicle. The box is a scale 5-feet, 6-inches tall. I made a bottom piece since the box protrudes from the bed.
After cutting up the busi- ness cards to see what would fit where, I made two doors for the rear of the box, each about a scale 18 inches wide and 4-feet, 3-inches tall. The hinges and latch are Grandt Line parts. I made the roof from a piece of 0.040-inch thick styrene sheet. I sanded down the edges all around and embossed sever- al lines of nail holes down the length, about a foot apart, and around the edges. My intent was to simulate a metal roof. I glued it in place and then colored the entire box with a coat of white paint.
When the paint had dried, I put the various pieces of signage in place, using Aleene’s Tacky Glue as an adhesive. Because the business cards were a bit thick, I photocopied them and then cut out the copies, using the tacky glue to affix them on the box sides. The copy paper produced a thinner design that looked better to me.
I weathered the roof with a bit of Rustall, dripped some down the sides, dabbed some on the hinges, and the project
was done. There was some side value to this model as well. I printed a copy of the lead photo shown in this article for Mike to display, and a slightly different version of it also appeared in our local weekly paper.
Memorial
The memorial was also easy to construct. At a train show a year or so ago, Matt Sharp of Train and Trooper had a little resin casting for a stone pedes-
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