Bedford and Vacation (1/35)

After a pause, I had time for work on the Bedford O tipper again. The work on the cab interior was challenged by missing parts. In fact everything except seats and dash board were missing. Once again the spares box came to my rescue (must write a tribute to the spares box one day!). Steering wheel came from a scrapped ZIS-5 lorry, gear lever and hand brake from the Italeri Bedford QL while the little box is the unused battery from my recently built Kapitän. I didn't bother to fit pedals as they can't be seen anyway. I added a small bag on the passenger seat and a British army fire extinguisher (from Resicast) on the cab rear wall.

Before painting. A horrendous sight - I can't say I managed to get things lined up here!

Cab interior painted and ready to be fitted inside the cab.

I fitted the last small parts to the chassis and aligned them with the tipping body. The spare wheel had to be trimmed a bit to make the body sit just right.  I didn't glue chassis and tipping body as I wanted to be able to paint the two parts separetly. To make sure everything would fit together effortlessly after painting I dry fitted cab, radiator and bonnet several times to check the fit and position of the parts. Finally I glued the radiator in place to act as a solid point to start from when fitting the painted subassemblies.

The cab interior was air brushed with Vallejo's 'Verde Oliva' 967, details brush painted and finally weathered. Fitting glass in the windows is alway rather tricky on resin kits, where hardly any opening is exactly the same size. But with determination and experience from several resin kits it wasn't too bad. I only had to throw away two pieces of glazing that turned out too small with the last stroke of the file. Glazing was glued with Kristal Kleer that dries up shiny and clear. I then closed up the cab and fitted the dash board which is best done through the still open doors and glued from behind (that prevents spilling glue over both wind shield and dash board).

After fitting of bonnet the lorry is now ready for painting. I have designed decals and they are currently being printed - license plates and all. It'll probably be a while before I get to paint the lorry as I'm off on summer vacation. While I like to model while in the summer cottage, I only paint models at home.

My Bedford O tipper ready for primer. Cab, bonnet and body will be 'Verde Oliva' while wheels, grill and mudguards will be black. The company name will feature on tailboard and cab doors.

Canadian Speeder (1/35)

I thought that Nystrup Gravel was the only 1:35 model railway to have a 'garden shed-type' speeder. But I have learned that Pete Mesheau in Canada over the last few weeks has built a speeder with pretty much the same general characteristics as Nystrup's speeder No. 7. Pete has allowed me to show a few images of his nice model. I'm proud that the first model built by a friend to feature on my blog is such a nice piece of scratch building.

Speeder no. 8 scratch built by Pete Mesheau in 1:35 scale. I never dreamt of seeing a little family of speeders in 1:35 - even numbered i cronological sequence. Photo: P. Mesheau.

Although it looks as if Pete's speeder is fitted with a more powerful engine than mine, both speeders are actually built on Black Beetles. Pulling three wagons was beoynd Nystrup's speeder's capability. Photo: P. Mesheau.

It is a great honour for me to have a model of my somewhat weird design being remodelled on the other side of the Atlantic. Pete wrote "When I saw your speeder, it 'spoke' to me, so I had to build one. Over the years, I've built similar models for western US logging roads. They are not overly pretty, but very charming". Pete called his model a 'Nielsen rip-off', but I don't see it that way. I haven't been ripped of anything - having gained much pleasure from seeing Pete's speeder. I believe that the motto 'if you don't share, you don't receive' applies to modelling as well as most other aspects of life.

Of particular interest is the features for crew safety Pete has built into his model. The exhaust pipe is routed above the roof to minimize ingress of dangerous gases and the fuel tank fills from outside the speeder to avoid fuel spills in the cabin. I’m sure Nystrup employees would applaud solutions like that.



Pete is very productive and has just finished this Fordson Thames lorry. It is built on the basis of a resin kit (Wespe Models) with a scratch built tipping body. The driver is a figure from James Coldicott.  Photo: P. Mesheau.

1950's Loco Advertising

The old Nystrup Gravel binder I recently found contained some advertising material from Danish loco manufacturer Nagboel. The Nagboel company obviously made several offers to Nystrup Gravel, although it is highly doubtful if the efforts ever paid off.

The 1950's advertising for a small Danish company like Nagboel surely can't be said to be advanced. No flashy fonts or advanced photography. Just a simple drawing of a loco working at a construction site. In the foreground two heroes of progress - civil engineers in practical dress - are overseeing the work. Even if a small company Nagboel made their material in English and managed to sell a rather sizable part of their production overseas, mainly through agents. Today Nagboel's international outlook hasn't diminished as the company in 1973 was taken over by British GKN Wheels - today GKN Landsystems.

Nystrup Gravel didn't seem to be tempted to buy. By the beginning of the 50's the company had several locos in decent working order and didn't need more. Chief mechanic Petersen even had a few old relics parked on a siding in the woods that could be used if everything else failed. If only for a few days until repairs were made on the more modern locos. If nothing else the Nagboel company made an impression on at least one of Nystrup's employees. Someone glued a small poster from Nagboel on the wall in the loco shed. The poster can be seen in several images from the shed.

From Chelyabinsk to Nystrup

Not just two French locomotives ended up at Nystrup Gravel because of the world war. A year ago a friend sent me a few photos. He had explored into one of the birch forest covering what was once the northernmost gravel pit of Nystrup Gravel. His photos showed a huge tracked tractor with cyrillic letters on the broken off radiator and faded white letters 'FluPlaKo' on the rear plate.

Two images of the rusting remains of a Soviet S-65 in one of the old gravel pits around Nystrup. Today a wilderness of birch forest difficult to navigate. Thanks to friend, explorer and railway enthusiast J. Jensen for his images.

Now I have determined that two Soviet tracked tractors found their way to Nystrup Gravel. The tractors were used by the Germans to pull aircraft at the air field at Mellemåen (Middle Stream) not far from Nystrup. Again a case where the German military utilized captured enemy equipment as best they could. According to British documents found in the Skovby Local Historical Archive 'FluPlaKo' is an acrynom for 'Flug-Platz Kommando'.

The S-65 tractors were Soviet copies of the American Caterpillar 60. The Soviet version was built at the Chelyabinsk Tractor Factory in the Urals in large numbers for both agricultural and military use. In the Soviet army they were primarily used to pull medium and heavy artillery. Large numbers were captured by the German army in the opening stages of the attack on the Soviet Union. A brief history of the S-65. Somehow two of them found their way to Denmark. The huge Chelyabinsk factory still exists today, continuing to produce tracked tractors.

Nystrup Gravel used one of the tractors to haul cut down trees away from areas to be quarried. The other was used for spares. Not much of a chance for delivery of spare parts from Chelyabinsk to the Danish countryside!

I went straight to my local hobbyshop in Copenhagen - Stoppel Hobby - to shop for Trumpeter's kit of the S-65 (kit no 05538).  My 1:35 version of Nystrup Gravel also has to have an S-65.