Western National Plaxton Beaver
Entry posted by 46444
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And now for something completely different....
When I went to Plymouth in the early 1990's to study believe it or not one of the things I can always remember are the Western National and Plymouth Citybus buses. Coming from the land of United Counties the mix of colours and different designs always stood out. Even after a night on the Barbican down at a club called the Salling School which was affectionately known as the 'GX'.*
At the time I was in my early 20's and owned a white 2CV # which was my pride and joy. During one of my placements I was driving between Freedom Fields and North Prospect and managed to right it off sadly so ended up having to use the bus to get around North Prospect, Stoke, Stonehouse and Devonport.
At the time Western National were under the auspices of the Badger Line and I can always remember their Plaxton Beavers and the more modern looking Pointers. The red, white and blue livery with the Badger logo always stood out and to this day remains my favourite bus livery. Here's a photo of a preserved example looking resplendent on the Kingsbridge bus rally:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/4/3927/15168403558_c80b8dea24_b.jpg
Hard to believe its preserved but I guess its 20 years ago since this example started in service and I'm getting old!
Now as it happens I have a number of EFE Western National buses from this period along with the odd Citybus example and whilst looking on eBay came across a sorry looking Western National Beaver that looked as if it had been around Charles Cross too many times. It had severe paint chipping around the destination screen roof as well as other places and the wheels looked like they were hanging off. I kind of felt sorry for it and bid 99p for it and won it. Postage was more that the model!
I should have taken a picture before I started but basically other than the above mentioned problems there was a mark in the roof paint work. This was removed with T-Cut and polished up nicely. The fixing points were drilled out underneath and the model broken down into its component parts. Thankfully, the decoration was not damaged.
The red area around the destination screen was carefully cleaned up with wet and dry as well as well a fibre glass brush. Once this was complete I used Tamiya masking tape to mask the red area off. Then the the remaining areas were covered in blue decorating tape.
First of all I sprayed the area with Valejo white as an undercoat before spraying the red using Valejo paint once more. On unmasking there was no strike through so the whole body was given a coat of Valejo satin to blend things together.
The offside wheels were repaired and the tyres glued into position with CA, The wheels and other blue parts of the body requiring attention received touching in with Valejo dark Prussian blue
The interior moulding has been sprayed with Halfords grey primer and will be detail painted. A driver and a couple of passengers will be added. I'll add mirrors and make good the reaming paintwork and in doing so it should be a suitable model bus for a layout as opposed to a glossy, out of the box shelf queen.
I'm pleased with how things have gone with this project and feel it's been saved from an uncertain future. The building masquerading as Western National's Laira Bridge depot before they moved to Chelson Meadow is the excellent free warehouse kit from Scalescenes.
More soon.
Cheers,
Mark
* Groin Exchange
# I owned a further two 2CV's before selling my last one to two spinsters from Bodmin...
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