quicksilvercoaches

A cheaper and quicker way to make that Venturer would be to get an Oxford Diecast Borderer and AEC tipper, cut them both in half and splice the rear bogie of the latter to the front of the former. As a bonus you can make an AEC tractor unit from the leftovers. The Stobart versions are cheap at the moment thanks to the big Atlas Editions sell-off.

They look similar enough to me, bearing in mind the Oxford Cortina isn't especially accurate. Not sure I'll bother with the narrowing for the sake of 1mm as the 1800 body looks the same width as the Cortina. The frontal resemblance between the two is not coincidental: when Roy Haynes joined BMC one of his first jobs was to improve on the ugly snub nose of Issigonis's Maxi design, which he seems to have done by reusing the work he did for Ford on the Cortina. I have one of those Lima Capris too but would love to get my hands on the Fiat 131. Never seen one anywhere though.

I'm not sure that's true. All the photos I can find of non-2000E Corsairs, including those registered post-1967 on G and H plates, show the chrome trim so it looks like it was only deleted from the 2000E. The new crop of Oxford Diecast cars haven't escaped the hacksaw either. First a trio of convertibles: Crayford Cortina and Viva, and a Radford Volvo P1800. And something you might think is a flight of fancy but does actually exist. Two prototype SD1 estates were built (one is at Gaydon and the other in the Haynes Motor Museum), but there is a home-built replica out there using the back end of a Volvo 245 so that's what I did in miniature to create a 'Rovolvo SD245'.

I've had trouble with getting Landcrabs apart too. The black one in my thread had already been dismantled once so it was easy, but a pale yellow one bought as a donor for the Maxi project was stuck solidly and I broke the sill so I had to acquire another. I haven't tried taking that one apart yet so fingers crossed the body survives in one piece.

Liking the look of those Bernard. Pity I didn't know about the rarity of the black-chassis Victor, it came in a job lot and the wheels looked so awful I felt I had to do something about them. I have a couple of green chrome-chassis versions too. The only Minix cars I'm missing are the Hillman Imp (not too bothered about this as I have the Oxford version) and the rare two, the Cresta estate and Rambler Classic. As the Hornby Sierra was mentioned, here are my efforts to make them actually look like Sierras. It took a lot of work to produce something even half-decent from this utterly terrible attempt (I won't even call it a model). The blue one is supposed to be a late high-spec version and has wheels from the Oxford Cosworth. Note the grey grille on the red one: this is prototypical but very rare as it was used only on the base model for the first nine months of production. This is a replica of the only known survivor, which is something of a legend among the car-spotting community. Wheels are from a Mk1 Fiesta and not quite right but as close as I can get.

With recent talk of Minix models I felt it was opportune to show some of my own efforts to bring some of these up to modern standards, albeit nowhere near the scale of 'CHARD's incredible undertaking. I still think the body mouldings are superb but were really let down by the terrible wheels, particularly on the later ones with black wheels and bases, but the availability of cheap diecasts makes it easy to sort that out The Anglia and 1100 were the first two I acquired about 15 years ago as painted shells with no glazing or wheels. These both have parts from Cararama Minis, back when they were commonplace. They're showing their age a bit now. My next attempt was a Triumph 2000 into a Mark 1 2.5 PI using bits from the Oxford Mark 2. Painted Ford Purple Velvet so not authentic but I like it. This Victor is my favourite. Transformed from one of the horrible black-wheeled models with Oxford FB Victor wheels. LHD Simca. An unusual choice for a UK company. Again this has Cararama Mini wheels. Landcrab. This still has the original wheels but spaced out to the correct width and painted. Corsair with Cortina wheels and interior. I slipped up here as it's supposed to be a 2000E but I realised too late that version doesn't have the chrome side strip (odd that the posh one has less chrome than lesser models). My most ambitious conversion so far. I used to own a Triumph Dolomite and always wanted a model of it, then one day I was looking at a Minix Triumph 2000 and realised with a bit of chopping and changing I might be able to make a passable Dolomite. As the current owner of an Austin Maxi, for my next trick I intend to try converting a Landcrab into a Maxi using the front end of a Mark 2 Cortina.

Those look like photos of the Pressed Steel factory yard sometime in the sixties. I've never seen so many Minix cars in one place!

This was discussed in the 'Railway Motors' thread. IIRC it was concluded that the body is genuine BR but the chassis-cab isn't; BR never had Ford D-series crew buses and that body is from a later Dodge.

This thread made me browse the vehicle models category on Shapeways and I was really disappointed at how little is available in 1/76. Everything seems to be made in HO, N or Z but hardly anything in OO. There's Paul Burkitt-Gray's Maestros, a chap with a range of 70s/80s Fords and some Irish buses but that's about it. I wonder if RailNScale would be amenable to scaling their excellent range up to OO?

Here's a Stobart Van Hool Astrobel stripped and repainted as a VIP corporate hospitality coach for my own fleet. The factory paint is extremely thick and hides a lot of detail so it really benefits from stripping back to bare metal and applying some thinner paint.

You are correct with regard to the Corgi OOC models. However, the Atlas VAL/Panorama in Wallace Arnold livery is not based on the Corgi tooing and is an entirely new casting in 1/72 scale. The Samuel Ledgard 2-axle Panorama is Corgi based and therefore 1/76, although for some reason it has the smaller VAL wheels that don't look right.

They did the same to me recently so I ignored the invoice. Checking my account everything has been paid for by DD so maybe they forgot to take payment for something and didn't realise until after they sent the invoice. Par for the course with Atlas.

Nice to see Crossways getting an airing here. Don't worry, you're not the only model bus operator on RMWeb - I guess it's obvious from my username who I am but for those who don't know I've been running my own fictional coach fleet for almost 17 years now. I'm not even into railways and I hang around here for the scenic and road vehicle side of things! Some but not all of my models can be found on Flickr at https://www.flickr.com/photos/quicksilver_coaches/albums/72157624857783370

Just found photos of what I believe to be a pair of ex BR crewbuses in fairground use in the early 90s but unfortunately they're on a private forum so I can't share them. They are Leyland Boxers registered ABT 351R and HDN 466S so are these genuine BR vehicles? The same bodies appear to have later been transplanted onto Ford Cargo chassis.

Phil makes a good point but quite frankly Atlas may have only their own ineptitude to blame for their cashflow problems. They've certainly earned themselves a terrible reputation for unprofessionalism and poor customer service that must be driving customers away, yet their inexplicable attitude is to sweep all criticism under the carpet, bury their heads in the sand and blindly carry on as if there's nothing wrong.

And you would be entirely correct, mine arrived today too. Nice model but would look better in a non-Stobart livery (I'm not a Stobart fan) so I'm thinking of starting my own fictional airport ground support fleet.

I had a Greatest Show on Earth model last week but nothing from World of Stobart since November, when I received Sammy Shammy. Another does appear to be on the way though as there is an invoice raised on 18 January for a 'Scania can' (sic) that I haven't received yet. Annoyingly, the invoices aren't listed in date order on the Atlas website and you can't sort them, which makes it very difficult to work out what's what, especially for the Greatest Show on Earth where what is listed on the invoice doesn't always match what was actually sent.

For any Model Bus Federation members, there will be a plan of this very vehicle in next month's Journal.

Yes pic 5 is an ex airport transfer bus trailer. It's been used as a box office on several circuses over a long period and may even still exist. Didn't realise pic 10 was ex BR too, bonus!

Just stumbled across this: http://trucks-buses-trams.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/gandeys-circus-birmingham-april-1990.html The subject of photo 12 is clearly an ex BR crewbus that ran away to join the circus!