The Little World

The joy of building Academy vehicles is the precise subassemblies that their kit moulding makes possible. The chassis of the Federal is no exception – in fact it is better than the Army ambulance that they put out. I still have the horrors trying to get all the wheels on the pavement at the same time, but at least there is a majority this time.

One point at which I differ from the general instructions of a military vehicle kit; I never paint the chassis the same colour as the bodywork. This is so that it can be seen more readily under the bulk of the structure. In the case of this truck I used the good old Tamiya acrylic Dark Iron. It seems to replicate most dirty frames very well even without applying additional weathering.

Of course the tyres would benefit from some dirt as well, but my last experience of losing a vehicle to bad paint choice leaves me reluctant to mess this one up. In any case, it will be no more weathered than any of the small die-cast vehicles on my toy airfield, and they please me greatly.

This may be a stumbling block for others…the dedicated diorama builder and the weathering expert. They’ll see the airfield as a mish-mosh of scale planes and die-cast vehicles – with structures scaled as variably as 1:72, 1:76, and 1:87. The discrepencies are very small but the fact that they are there at all will be irritating. I can only say that they should have seen some of the old Marx toy sets that were popular in North America in the 50’s. Scales varied widely, there were no paints on any of the soldiers, indians, or structures and the working play parts had control buttons and knobs that stuck out in all directions.

Which did not stop us from loving them one and all. When a set was advertised as a play set, we took it as official permission to play as hard as we could. I have retained my zest.