1956 Ampol Trial diorama - update 3

The decals are drying for both the Peugeot and the VW Beetle. I apply a special stuff called Micro-Sol which effectively dissolves the decals onto the surface, and they crinkle up a bit in this process, but they should look OK by the next morning. The Peugeot, of course, is going to be splattered in so much dust and mud that you will barely be able to see the decals (and all the many other blemishes on the model itself.) 

 

 Ditto all those comments with the VW. The real historical VW had white-edged decals, which I can't produce on my laser printer. So I have stuck to the outlined font, but have made it red. The "Ampol" decal is actually two laid on top of each other. I have white-backed decal paper, so I've laid down a rectangle of white, and then the Ampol logo on top of that. Hopefully it will work.

I have very few reference photos for Jack WItter's 1956 VW, so I am making things up here. However, as he won the 1957 Ampol Trial there are plenty of photos of that car, and it was absolutely plastered with graphics. Jack owned a "waste textile" factory (I think that's a polite way of saying "rags") and so he promoted himself in both 1957 and 1958 with "Witter the Waster" slogans, so I figured he might have used that line in 1956, too.

Oh, and as you can see, I've left the rear split-screen window in place. I decided in the end that cutting off the divider in that section would not only be a lot of relatively useless work, given that in the diorama the VW's front is facing the viewer; it would also be a problem to smooth off and repair the cut section and then match the paint job with that nice green colour. So an "incorrect" old Veedub it remains.

 

The last part of the diorama has arrived, the Morris Minor. It's a pretty ordinary little Corgi Morris 1000 from the 1960s, and the eBay seller has added some extras, including windscreen wipers, an exhaust pipe and some shaky hand-done paintwork here and there. As I plan to mod it further then fling mud at it later on, it's a perfectly good starting point, especially as it cost less than two pounds, plus a few quid for postage.

 

The radiator grill was matt black, not the look I wanted — I wanted the horizontal bars to show up a bit, so I gently sanded it with 600 sandpaper and the bars came up well enough for my needs. Then I searched through my spare-parts bin of old sprues and leftover bits of photo-etched metal bits and got lucky, finding a very nice looking candidate to "split" the windscreen in two, just like a Series II Morry Minor. The eBay guy's windscreen wipers were easy enough to flip off with a scalpel point, so I then repositioned them so they looked very Series II as well.

Here's the three cars, ready for their adventures in mud-world.