Bugatti Fan

That is a very nice model of Fred Dibnah's Land Rover Fabrizio. Surprised to learn that a TD5 engine is not made in 1/24th scale by any after market supplier. I watched a lot of Fred Dibnah's series on UK TV. He was well into running steam powered lorries, traction engines and road rollers He was a real character with a very dry sense of humour. Sadly missed.

Some years ago I acquired a Bandai Bugatti Royale kit in 1/16th scale. A fellow modeller I know said 'You can have this old kit if you think you can do something with it! It's a bit of a wreck as the body work has sustained bad damage in the box.' So I took it home and it languished for about 10 years under a bench in my workshop. Last year I was looking for a project that would be a bit different from the norm when I came across some photos of a chassis for Gerald Wingroves T41 in his book The Complete Car Modeller 2. Being a bit intrigued by this and having copies of his T41 drawings I thought that building just a chassis model might be a challenge being a little different and found some more pictures of his T41 chassis models on the internet. On looking at the kit parts, the chassis was very, very basic to say the least, but having said that I had to remember that most of it would be hidden when the kit bodywork was fitted. However, the basics were there so I knew that there would be a fair amount of scratch building a lot of detail that simply was not there. Upon examination of the Wingrove drawings I utilised as many of the kit parts as possible and added as much to my model from the drawings even though some compromises were in order.

Lovely little sports car model.

Fabrizio, I know you do not really want to use a trans kit, but I think that C1 Models sells a dimpled hood as a separate item made specifically to fit the Revell kit. I take it that the dimple in the hood you refer to is a recess to take a spare wheel? A bit of information for other Land Rover modellers, besides the normal Land Rover after market items, C1 makes 3 brilliant trans kits to make versions of the black Spectre Land Rovers.

Some of the haunting theme music from the Titanic film.

Looking at the pictures in Pierre's last post only goes to prove the gross stupidity of many on line sellers just sticking a kit into a plastic bag and sending it. Even worse I got a kit sent to me bought from Amazon and all they did was stick their delivery label straight onto the kit box and deliver it. Fortunately it arrived relatively unscathed. Guess the delivery driver might have been a fellow modeller? But it could have been a lot worse. Many of you think the US postal service sucks? The UK post office recently has had enough troubles of its own to contend with it late too.

Interesting builds. For anyone into Land Rovers there are 2 UK resin aftermarket makers of stuff for the Revell kit. C1 Models and Motobitz.

The Jorvik Museum in York has a detailed account of the incident !

I received H G Wells ' Invisible Kit !

I thought that the site was down this morning. Turned out that Duck Duck Go was down.

The bigger the cruise liners get and many are now colossal like floating cities, the more problems they create for the places they visit. Especially places of great natural beauty or of historical interest where the local economies suddenly start making loads of money, the lovely places get spoilt by becoming 'touristy' with shops popping up selling tourist tat souvenirs. Bigger places like New York, Boston, Rio and Capetown can cope with it, but much smaller places will become ruined to please the 'one day' tourists from the ships. Venice is a good example that was in great peril due to too many tourists from cruise ships so they did something about it. Those ships get bigger and bigger but the places they visit do not and the local infrastructure has difficulty coping. I shudder to think about one of those colossal ships going down in mid ocean as it would be the Titanic much magnified. There are so many now and the law of averages may dictate it happening.

That's a real shame Les. Generally tourists are respectful to and mindful of the people they come into contact with when visiting another country. Hopefully that was an isolated incident

That's a nice looking car in your photos Skip, and a very interesting build by Brizio being featured. Why can't Photobucket use a small discreet watermark in a corner somewhere. Their huge watermark ruins every picture. You can load pictures directly from your PC into this site incidentally

I have been reading all the stuff about USPS recently! Living in the UK it hasn't affected me, but guess that it must by frustrating for you guys Tony.

John and yourself take modelling to a completely higher level than most of us as you are both very good at 3D programming and printing all those intricate details for your models, even the working internal parts. I thought that you would get on well with John as you both have a similar approach to your builds. I can see more collaboration between you both in the future. Those Rolls engine drawings look very interesting Francois. It is always good to refer to factory originals.

Nothing irked me today as I got a semi scratch built model finished today. Hurrah! I really must find something now to gripe about! Lol.

After a long haul I got a semi scratch built model finished today. Yes!

It is amazing how parts can 'disappear'. My workshop has a laminate floor, so dead easy to sweep and find parts, right? 99 percent of the time I just put a soft broom around and then use a dust pan and brush to sweep the little pile of debris into and sort through for the part. Easy! BUT, the other day I dropped a shaped wire part about 25mm (1 inch) long. I heard it hit the deck but it just managed to disappear completely. You would think a part that long would be easy to find on my floor. But oh no! I gave up after half an hour and made another! What amazes me is that I have often dropped miniscule parts on the floor and retrieved them, but not this bigger one.I I can understand why jewelerry craftspeople have a leather apron they wear that is also attached to the front of their work bench to catch precious metal filings.

More excellent progress on your F40 Thomas. I see that you mentioned the Autograph company for extra detailing parts. There is another company in the USA who makes upgrade parts for the old Pocher kits named Model Motorcars. I thought I would mention them as another upgrade source but possibly you may already know of them as they probably have some F40 upgrade parts too.

Having tried to access it today Scalemotorcars forum appears to be down, and has been for quite a while. Anyone know what is going on with it? A message saying that they are trying to deal with attacks on the site has been up for ages. It was a good site that compliments this one as it mainly dealt with large scale scratch built models. It would be a great pity if it is now down and gone forever. So that will be another auto modelling forum gone like SA.

Interesting to see your improvements. That F40 kit has been around for quite a while. The old Pochers were never the best kits and need quite experienced modellers to get the best from them. Looking good so far. Will be following.

I'm late to the party too! A very interesting model (or should I say models?) beautifully built and detailed.

Very nice!

Incredible engine machining. Reminds me of the late Gerald Wingrove's models. I keep seeing a Novi engine mentioned. Is an Indianapolis Roadster model on the cards as a next project?

I take my hat off to those modellers like Mark who can work wonders on those tiny 1/43rd scale kits. 1/43rd scale I know is the accepted norm for what is a very popular scale, but it does seem a bit of an oddball scale. I read that it is something to do with it originally being compatible with O Gauge model railways. It always seems a bit weird as a scale as it is not equally divisible by anything like for example 1/48th that doubled in size makes 1/24th scale and up again to 1/12th. One another tack, 1/32nd doubles to 1/16th and again to 1/8th. Purely logical to me.