Tuesday, July 31, 2012

The road vehicles of Melbridge Dock - AEC Monarch

AEC Monarch

When I was building the Dock, most vehicle kits were whitemetal and rather cost more than I really wanted to spend on the meagre salary I earned. Luckily, the good people at Cooper Craft came to my rescue with their AEC Monarch plastic kit.

Available with several different flavours of tilt (the body behind the cab), in the good old days, pretty much every model railway layout had at least one of these somewhere. Hardly surprising as it's a good looking lorry with a nicely vintage appearance. More to the point the plastic kit was cheap and very nice to put together. It was easy to while away an evening building one and end up with a nice model for the train set for your efforts.

My examples are both liveried as transport for the owner of the stone warehouse at the left hand side as you look at the layout. "William Berry" is a fruit and wine importer, hence the barrels. Boxes and a canvas cover, well, they are everywhere aren't they ?

That cover denotes the lorry that sits under a hoist on the warehouse front. I'm assuming that once loaded, this will be spread over the back to keep everything in place and dry.

This kit is still available and still lovely to put together. If you've never built a plastic model before, go and have a go at one.


3 comments:

Jeffrey Showell said...

Again, a pair of very nicely done models. I've made the flat bed version--it's an excellent kit.

I have vague ideas of making a pantechnicon body for this kit.

Phil Parker said...

A pantechnico nbody would certainly be interesting. The great thing about this kit is it's cheap enough, and adaptable enough for people to do this. Mods are considerably easier than with a diecast model and the kit is already in bits, and made of plastic so much easier to chop and stick back together.

If you do this, please send a photo as I'd love to see the results.

Jeffrey Showell said...

Well, I feel like you've thrown down the gauntlet. I'm not in the UK, so I'll need to place an order...

You'll need to be patient.