As I was shopping for 6.5 mm gauge track in 1/87 scale I added a conveyor belt loader-kit to my order. It will look good next to the track and workshop on my future 1/87 scale diorama. The kit is Auhagen 41630 and has parts for two loaders.
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| Conveyor belt loader ready for service. It looks like it was last used for loading dry clay or a rare earth mineral. |
The Auhagen kit is a simple model with few parts and the possibility of building it with the operating feature of changing the height of the off-loading end of the loader. I decided to glue my assembled kit solid as I can always set the position on the second loader to create variety. The assembly process is well thought out and clearly illustrated in the kit's instruction. I chose to deviate from them, nevertheless.
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| The Auhagen assembly instruction illustrating the kit's small number of parts. |
The kit instructions will have you start out with assembly of the conveyor belt and fixing the boom parts around it. I feared that painting and weathering could be difficult with that assembly sequence and I began with assembly of the lattice boom adding as many parts as I could without hampering the addition of the conveyor belt.
Belt and boom were painted and weathered before being united with AC-glue. Additional parts were then fixed to the construction and painted/weathered as they were added.
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| Boom assembled with the help of an added scrap of plasticard. Originally the orange conveyor belt parts held the boom pieces together, and with my changed assembly sequence that wouldn't work. |
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| Main body and belt ready for assembly. |
Having prepared the remaining parts they were glued in place and in no time the loader was finished. I brush painted the last parts with the same medium blue paint I had used for air brushing. Despite being Vallejo 71111 'Mediterranean Blue' pre-thinned for air brush use, it brush paints pretty well. Tires were picked out in black with light grey wheel centres.
Weathering consisted of a thin wash of Raw Umber Windsor & Newton oil paint diluted heavily with turpentine. When dry I used graphite powder rubbed on with a short haired brush to represent worn metal and some MIG weathering powder for remains of the bulk material loaded.
A great little kit that assembles with no fuss in less than 30 minutes of effective modelling. Apart from a nice feature outside a workshop the loader will also be a nice load on my Soviet narrow gauge platform wagons.
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