quicksilvercoaches

Glad you like it. I've been wanting to see what one might look like in civvy colours but as far as I know no recovery firm in the UK has one - have any been sold by the MOD yet? I could imagine Adam Crouch buying one and painting it in his bright orange. Feel free to use the pics. I've just finished the Unimog in the same colours so I'll get some pics of that too next week.

Reviving this old thread as I bought one of the S&S recovery vehicle kits and finished it in civvy colours. A little simplified to make it suitable for wargaming but it captures the impressive bulk of these machines. After finishing it I discovered Feather 3D Printing, who do it with open windows in both 1/72 and 1/76 scales. I've bought one of theirs for comparison with the S&S offering but as they're printed to order it hasn't arrived yet.

Here are my LDVs from the CMAC 3D prints. Minibus is a straight build, fire appliance is the BR crew van with added bits (so the opposite of what Merfyn did above). Great to finally have a model of this ubiquitous van as they were everywhere not so long ago but have virtually disappeared now, even if my memories of them are not very fond - mostly knackered council minibuses driven by inexperienced teachers on school trips.

Thanks for the list. Were the Wolseley Six and the Marina coupe released in OO as I don't remember ever seeing them? Other than those two, I have everything except the 1800 and the Datsun. Looking forward to the next batch, especially the 3-litre as I have an irrational liking for them, perhaps because I have a Maxi and it's like the Maxi's weird big brother.

I'm going to single out the Mini here as this has had some modifications to represent my neighbour's car that is actually parked on my drive as I write this. I cut off the standard wheels, replaced them with Minilites from a Cararama Cooper, added wheelarch extensions from plastic strip (awkward!) and painted it Polynesian, a 1990s Rover colour. He was amazed when I showed it to him as he's never seen a model of a Clubman estate before, much less a replica of his own car.

Glad you like them and I hope I've done your excellent CAD work justice. Feel free to share the pic. Good to hear re 1800 and Datsun as I'd like a full set. Were there any other early ones I missed or do I have everything else? I still have the Bedford coach to do but that needs a bit more work as I intend to put seats in it and run it as a heritage vehicle in the coach fleet that provided my username.

I finished the last batch of @m0rris CMAC 3D prints this weekend, resulting in this impressive lineup that looks like part of the Festival of the Unexceptional showground. What can you spot here? This is most of the range so far but I'm missing a couple of early ones, the Austin 1800 and the Datsun that I hope will be re-released at some point.

Here's a curio that would suit any layout past, present or future 😃, a 1/76 3D printed DeLorean. Got it on ebay a few years ago and can't remember the seller's name but he seemed to be a private seller who mainly made stuff for himself and sold the odd surplus bit. It was pretty rough with a lot of surface ridges visible, like it had been painted straight off the printer without any preparation, so I sanded it down and refinished it.

I've never seen one of those Rivarossi Fiats/Ladas. There is a cheaper and easier way to get a 1/76 Lada thanks to @m0rris's 3D print. Not quite finished yet and still waiting for glazing. Colour is the correct Lada Cream that incredibly was still available off the shelf in Halfords a few years ago despite the number of cars existing in that colour surely being in single figures!

Another one from @m0rris. I bought this LDV intending to convert it into a minibus but then he made a minibus version so I bought that instead. This one was inspired by a photo of a Dutch fire tender, not based on a specific brigade but a generic industrial light appliance with the Rover V8. I added a plasticard bulkhead and a rear seat from the spares box and fabricated a ladder rack from plasticard and staples to mount the Scale Model Scenery ladder on. This is the last of my previous purchases. There is one more batch of recent releases bought a few weeks ago that haven't been started on yet.

Here's a few more of @m0rris's 3D prints. All are based on real cars seen at last year's BL Autumn Rally. The blue Allegro is quite interesting, a 1976 Belgian-built domestic market LHD car imported and converted to RHD when 5 years old.

Good to know, I guess it won't be too difficult now you've done the Westminster. Any chance of a Triumph 1300/Toledo/Dolomite? I had a Dolomite and recently met a 1300 owner who would love to have a model of his car. A Montego is high on my wants list too and would go nicely with your Metros and Oxford's Maestro.

Thought I'd start a new thread for this build instead of adding it to my general one as it's a bit special. Having amassed a collection of battered Husky Citroen DS Safaris I started looking for inspiration, and what better to model than the iconic BBC Roving Eye camera car that was such a feature at horse races in the 1970s? The Broadcast Engineering Conservation Group website has a good selection of photos and about a month ago the BBC uploaded to their YouTube channel a piece from Blue Peter featuring John Noakes demonstrating it, so I had enough reference material. There were actually two very similar cars. The first (ELC 514J) replaced the original Humber roving eye (a possible future project as the base car is available from Oxford) in 1971 but was itself replaced by VGY 997M a couple of years later as the new one was a larger-engined DS23 and its predecessor was apparently underpowered for carrying so much extra weight. This lasted until 1982 when it was replaced by a CX and was then stripped of its equipment and sold to a cameraman for private use. Both of these were facelifted DSs but the Husky is a pre-facelift type, so it needed some filler on the headlights to carry out the facelift. The original wheels were a bit naff so I swapped them for a set of the right type from an Oxford DS saloon. The camera came from a Matchbox Mercedes TV van that I had converted to a minibus and had been sitting in the spares box for 20-odd years waiting for a new role, and the cameraman's seat is from a set of Kibri office furniture - yes it really was just a basic plastic school-type chair with nothing more than a lap belt! I found a figure in a suitable pose to represent the brave souls who sat in that seat at 40mph or more while concentrating on listening to the producer and keeping the camera focused in the right place. Another stroke of good fortune was the discovery on eBay of a set of 3D printed trailers, one of which was very close in style to the generator trailer that had to be towed around to provide power for all the camera equipment and just needed the top cover adding. A piece of thread represents the cable from car to camera and the yagi aerial is from the Scale Model Scenery range. Every photo seems to show a different style and position so they must have experimented with different transmission methods over the years. Paint is standard Humbrol colours to approximate the BBC livery - the shade of green looks different in every photo. Transfers were home made and the correct style of 1970s BBC TV logo was surprisingly hard to find as it wasn't the same as that used on screen. Really chuffed with how well this turned out and it's provided me with a model of a unique and fondly-remembered vehicle, even though I'm too young to have ever seen it myself. But that's not all. Exploring the BECG website I came across power generator P10, which looked very similar to the old Oxford Bedford TK generator truck that was one of their very first OO models. An ebay purchase and a repaint from the garish Bartello's Circus orange and yellow to the restrained BBC grey and green created a reasonable if not entirely accurate replica of P10. And for my next project, the last roving eye car was a green Land Rover Discovery 2. Guess what Oxford have just released.

That would be more fitting on the bigger Farina 6/99 and 6/110, which I don't think anyone has modelled yet. Looks like a few police forces used the 16/60 but the big ones are the archetypal 1960s police car. Glad you like them. They're enjoyable little things to put together and you've done wonders for my collection of everyday classics. I could probably stage my own miniature Festival of the Unexceptional now!

I've been busy modelling more cars. Acquired some part-built Rod Parker kits and finished them off. I already had a P5 and a Snipe so now there are twins And here they are with similar but not identical models from other ranges But as well as those, there's also this little lot from @m0rris's 3D printed range.

I'd definitely be interested in a few OO Aussie cars. A Leyland P76 would be fantastic!

I hadn't done any old toy renovations for a while so I decided to have a go at this rather sad Dublo Dinky Land Rover. Dark green with ivory wheels is the archetypal Land Rover colour scheme so that's what I went for (Humbrol Brunswick Green) and what I think Dinky should have done instead of that non-prototypical bright green they all came in. The tooling was clearly made by someone who knew their Land Rovers and/or had a real one to study as all the little details are spot on. Fit some better wheels and it wouldn't look out of place with Oxford and the like, not bad for a 60-year old toy.

This is something I've wondered. The cabs on the ones with integral bodies are bigger than the stand-alone cab. Surely they should be the same size but which is closer to the right scale?

Is it really a Minor or could it pass for a Morris Cowley van as they looked exactly like a slightly bigger Minor?

How things have changed for the better at Oxford Diecast in 25 years! The modern collector of Oxford scale models would find it difficult to believe this Lledo-esque manufacturer of 'fit the box' promotional models is the same company and the transformation is remarkable. Am I right in thinking the Chipperfields Circus Bedford TKs were Oxford's first venture into proper scale modelling in the early 2000s? If only Lledo had done the same and put more effort into the 1/76 Cargo Kings range, including producing the Iveco and ERF that were prototyped. Maybe they'd still be with us today...

Received my keyrings today, thanks to Richard for informing us about them as I had no idea of their existence. They appear to be a standard length rather than scale and from my rough calculations the R4 and 205 are virtually spot on 1/76, the Clio is a fraction small but definitely usable, and the Golf and Alpine are more significantly undersized, somewhere between OO and HO so they will need careful use. All are very well-finished and detailed models and I wasn't expecting rotating wheels - they're really too nice to use as keyrings being battered around in a pocket, and I wonder how many will have their keychains removed.

Some excellent modelling of vehicles that wouldn't even be out of place on a modern day layout as scruffy Land Rovers are very 'in' on the classic car scene at the moment. Here's a 130 I made from a BW Models kit a few years ago. I recall it being quite a fiddly build as the myriad of different LRs offered by BW were obviously designed to share as many common parts as possible at the expense of ease of assembly. The kit was taken over by Mid Devon Models when BW packed up but they appear to have ceased trading now so I don't know what ultimately became of it.

That one doesn't as it looks like a Series 2 car. The 'Quartic' wheel was actually discontinued very early on in 1974 so only the earliest Series 1 saloons had it and most have round wheels. Being LHD must make it a Belgian-built car rather than a Longbridge one.

This may be of interest following the discussion of Astravans earlier this year. An ex Jarvis van owned by a local electrician as something to use for both work and shows and he's put a lot of work into it including a recent full respray in the original colour. There can't be many of these left now!

I now have all four of the 1/76 Husky cars with the purchase of this Mercedes. Also from the market, it's a bit battered but only cost a pound and has the opening bootlid still intact so it's a good candidate for restoration.