I need a prototype

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Yarraman here we come

Going to QLD State Archives kept seeming like the right step and option, but it constrained me to during the weekdays and working full time I am time poor. I thought surely QLD has a Tank Wagon laying around and the Ipswich Museum was the first place that came to mind, but I thought I would do some more googling and don't ask me how I found this news article Historic Tanker Returns To Yarraman - southburnett.com.au where a local group had rescued one of the old QR wagons.

I gave the Mrs. the heads up we were going on a road trip. We packed the car with a picnic and full tank of diesel and off we went. When I found the Yarraman site, I was like resident expert, explaining QLD history to my lovely wife. I was that excited I had forgot to get my phone as I got out the car, so back to the car and I snapped away as many photos I could. 

While I couldn't get up close enough as the tanker is locked behind a fence. It was enough for me to start roughly guessing the size of the relevant components in frame, tank, strapping, bogies to get perspective and I now had a Prototype to model from and could input measurements into my homemade calculator to understand the model piece sizes I would need to make a model.

Here are a couple pictures I took, they don't do it justice and I would recommend a drive to visit this metal monster.

Where do you buy Styrene

Excited by the find, I needed to get some styrene to keep the wheels rolling. Locating a styrene supplier was actually easier than I realised as when watching videos on scratch building, I stumbled upon Evergreen Scale Models who have a great range of information. Inputting my measurements into my calculator, I wrote down my sizes and matched with relevant codes and headed to my local hobby shop. 

I was in luck this day as the female owner was in store. She welcomed me into the shop and said "How can I help you?". I explained my back story and told her I was trying to get into model rail, but wanted to try my hand at scratch building in styrene. Follow me she said and there was a range of stands with styrene product. 

It was great to walk into a shop and be treated with kindness and respect and the owner explained I would also need a couple of tools which the gentleman at PGC Scale models had told me too. It is this period where I started to spend my first dollars on the hobby buying the following items.

  • Pin Vice Drill
  • Exacto Knife No.11 + blades
  • Sandpaper and Files
  • Sprue Cutters
  • Styrene 127, 134, 135, 167, 9101, 9103
  • Tamiya Brush
  • Tamiya Extra Thin Cement

In my next posts I will try and keep explaining the process I went on and share my learnings and where new doors began to open.

Until next time.

Little Shunter



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