This week saw me standing in line at the local post office (well, actually a corner of a super market operating a post office service). The time waiting was truly worth it. My package contained a long sought after kit: the Roadcraft Land Rover Series 1 fire tender in 1:35 scale!
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| An understated package. |
The rugged Land Rover was popular in Danish fire and rescue services, particularly in rural areas. I remember seeing one in action from a first floor window in my grand parents' farm. While I was having my afternoon nap ( I must have been about 6 years old) the neighbour's pig stable caught fire. All the noise woke me op, and the first thing I saw when I looked through the curtains was a little red Land Rover fire tender laying out hoses to a small pond.
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| Whitemetal chassis and resin body parts. This vehicle is perfect for putting out fires around Nystrup. |
The kit is made from white metal and resin with etched brass for small and delicate details. I have
built a Roadcraft Bedford O lorry and being impressed with its quality, I knew I had to have a Land Rover. The problem is that Roadcraft kits are as rare as hens' teeth. I have only seen them advertised on
the Scale Link website. Having left a mail some time ago I was contacted recently and told they had tracked down a few of the rare kits.
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| Page 1 of the assembly diagrams - and a lot of parts! |
Usually a short run multi media-kit will be accompanied by some awfull instructions, sometimes leaving the builder with more questions than answers. This is not the case here! Not only do Roadcraft kits come with nice drawings showing where the parts go, they also have a written up assembly manual. No less than 16 A5 pages of helpful text comes with the fire tender. I'll have a hard time to keep my hands off this kit. But I have other projects to finish first.
Where to buy this model?
ReplyDeleteThat's the hard part! Even in 2016 it was quite a task for me to find the kit. I think i looked for it for more than a year before Scale Link came to the rescue with a few kits they'd dug up somewhere. As I understood it (I'm no longer modelling in 1/35 scale) the production has been discontinued years ago. Scale Link no longer advertises the model and I suspect eBay or other auction sites are your best chance. I have also built the Bedford tipper from Roadcraft and they are both excellent kits with great detail. Really recommended!
ReplyDeleteNot easy to look for the kit in ebay nor in other Website.....
ReplyDeleteSometimes I think the hunt for a rare kit is a great warm up before the actual building begins. Good luck hunting!
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