quicksilvercoaches

There was also the ROMAN, the Romanian licence-built version that was briefly sold in the UK in the late seventies. The cab was actually designed by Saviem but saw more use by MAN as Renault adopted their own cabs after the takeover.

These all look very familiar. Nice to see a fellow member of a certain beige forum on here too.

The website is a bit out of date. It's on his ebay shop: https://www.ebay.co.uk/usr/m0rris122

You're in luck - the Rover 75 is one of the vehicles in OO currently available from @m0rris.

Some more completed from CMAC @m0rris's ever-growing range. The Mini represents one my parents had, registered in 1977 but apparently a 1973 model with the fake wood trim.

Some unusual subjects among @m0rris's recent creations that I don't think have been modelled in any scale before. The Spitfire is tiny and I was terrified of breaking those slim pillars. Rover 800: Pre-Princess BL wedges in Morris and Wolseley form: Rover 200 Tomcat coupe: Rover 400 Tourer: Austin 3-litre: Triumph Spitfire: Vauxhall Astra: Mk2 Cortina 4-door (this is a replica of the 1600E my dad had): Mk2 Cortina estate: There's another 10 waiting their turn now these are done.

They're resin copies of the Cararama MGB hood that a friend did a few years ago to use up the little bits of leftover resin from other projects. I'm running out now so must ask him to do some more.

Not quite as easy though. The Minix Corsair is a 4-door so it'd need some adjustment to the door mouldings (and an interior fabricating). Someone on Facebook suggested a Crayford Mk3 Cortina, which would be difficult for the same reason.

A couple more Oxfords have met the hacksaw. I found a photo of a Crayford Consul Capri that I didn't know existed and liked the look of so I decided to model it, and a Mk1 Cortina got the same treatment while I was at it.

My latest batch of @m0rris's cars have just arrived, but here's the big one of the road vehicle range, the Bedford VAL/Harrington Legionnaire coach based on the Italian Job transporter, to which I have added seats to turn it back into a PSV. Another recent completion from a firm I don't think have been mentioned here is this Miniature Haulage Creations Volvo FMX recovery truck.

Here's something a bit different, an Austin Maestro Convertible. It did exist but only as a concept drawing and was never built, so I chopped the roof off an Oxford model to make what might have been.

Here's a railway-related 3D printed road vehicle that doesn't appear to have been mentioned yet. The Leyland Terrier crewbus is available in N and OO (this is the latter) from Ray Rimes Designs and looks far superior to P&D Marsh's effort. This is straight out of the box and I haven't done anything to it yet, but it won't be going in BR colours. James Mellors Amusements had two of them (ABT 351R and HDN 466S) as staff sleeping accommodation and later transferred their bodies to a pair of Ford Cargos, so it'll be joining my fairground fleet.

IBG kit 72020 is the one you want for the Blackpool wrecker. It correctly represents the short-bonnet 969 model used by Blackpool whereas the Matchbox, Oxford and Langley versions are all long-bonnet 980 tank transporters.

Great to see someone putting so much effort into accurately modelling a UK truck. It looks a lot more involved than the Strato I've just finished in 4mm, a Road Transport Images cab on an Oxford chassis representing one of the last Stratos that were just Iveco cabs with the big A badge grafted on. There was still a Strato in haulage use a couple of years ago but it's on SORN now. It was 22 years old and 300 miles from home when I encountered it.

The latest CMAC releases from @m0rris on ebay now include one that'll be of particular interest to @Les Bird, a 4-door Mk2 Cortina. The Cortina also comes as an estate, and added to the BL range are an Austin 3-litre, Marina coupe and estate and Wolseley and Morris versions of the wedge 18-22/Princess.

Good to know there is a UK survivor. The story I found about the pickup was that it was bought by a Jowett enthusiast for restoration but he sent the chassis to a shotblaster and forgot about it, then they went bust and the liquidators scrapped it, which seems rather careless of him.

I'd love to have one of those in my collection for its sheer "what the heck is that?" value. I'd never even heard of the Jowett CD and had to do some research to find out it was only ever a prototype. Well done for modelling something so utterly obscure!

If you wanted to model a contemporary layout in 1984 I think you would have been completely out of luck with virtually nothing available in 1/76 car or truck wise. The toy manufacturers had long since moved up to around 1/64 scale so Matchbox and Corgi were out, and what few kits were available tended to be of older vehicles from the 1960s or before. EFE was the first diecast manufacturer to work specifically in 1/76 and was still five years away, and I think this was before even the Hornby Sierra appeared. You'd be okay for buses though as 1984 was still within the golden era for whitemetal kits with companies like Pirate and Anbrico making plenty of current types. Looking at photos of modern-image layouts from that era, most seem to use the plastic HO models from European firms like Wiking and Herpa. They're LHD and noticeably too small but the best available at the time. Being a younger modeller (1984 is before I was even born) I sometimes don't appreciate how good we have things nowadays and then threads like this bring home how little choice there used to be.

Here's another @sandsmodels product, the newly-released M60 recovery conversion kit for the US Army M35 cargo truck. The base model is a cheap but surprisingly good snap-together Chinese plastic kit.

Confusingly this isn't the first company called Beacon Models to make models of interest to railway modellers but has no connection to the original. That one was around in the 1990s and made some rather fragile clear resin OO modern car/van kits (I remember a Ford Cortina, Escort and Transit, and an Austin Metro) along with a Wright Liberator bus.

Our fleet don't break down! The wreckers are there to recover other operators' vehicles and the income from them funds the maintenance of the coach fleet.

Here's the Feather 3D MAN wrecker. It's completely different and much chunkier than the S&S version and I suspect may be based on a non-UK type as it's LHD. There's something odd with the dimensions though. The Feather was ordered as 1/76 but is noticeably bigger than the 1/72 S&S. I don't know which is more accurate as I haven't found any dimensions for the real thing, but they don't sit well together.

I've got one of the Feather MANs which should be finished this week. It's very different from the S&S version. According to his Facebook page, he's going to be doing the Foden 6x6 wrecker, which is one I'm looking forward to.

Here's the @sandsmodels Unimog. Perhaps an unlikely thing to find in UK civvy hands as it's an Australian army vehicle, but that's the beauty of a fictional fleet.

This BR Maestro was at the BL Autumn Rally at Milton Keynes Museum today. I think it's actually ex BT rather than BR but a nice replica nonetheless.