TRUCK
UPGRADE PROJECTS

Toy cars and truck vary in scale. Most seem to hover around 1/64 scale, but occasionally, you find some closer to HO, and some that are about 1/100. In general, I find Matchbox brand is 1/64, and vintage Tomica is closer to 1/100. I had a cheap set of semis from a variety pack, and decided to backdate them in 2022 for my layout as I like vintage vehicles as well as steam locomotives. (Go figure....) I also did a little refurbishing and modifying of existing HO scale models. My particular favorite is a fire truck.

Dump Truck
	The first step was to eliminiate the neon green and shiny toy plastic look. The simplest method: paint. I just used paint acrylic paint from the craft aisle at the local big box store.		The dark green bed was definitely an improvement, and I painted key details silver and tried to tone down the bright green of the cab.
	A tan cab was a much better choice, and I painted the rims black to kill off the toy wheel vibe. Modelers on the Internet suggest replacing the wheels altogether with something from Atlas, but my budget for this is $0. Now that I have a 3D filament printer, replacing the wheels with something closer in realism is a distinct possibility.		The headlights and foglights embedded in the bumper still made the truck feel a little too modern. A piece of wood to cover the existing bumper, and some sprue ends cut into domes finished off the project with a nice vintage look. The undersized semi cab looks closer to a vintage 1 ton truck after these changes.

Flatbed Truck
	This truck had cylinders for compressed gas, and looked really out of place. I pulled the cylinders off with the notion of making this a tractor trailer rig. After a little thought, I felt a flatbed truck was a better option. The bed and stake frame sides are all coffee stirrers and matchsticks		A new bumper from a matchstick, and retro styled headlamps made from sprue ends. These headlights got painted with glow-in-the-dark paint as an experiment based on some things John Allen did. I'm not sure the room will be dark enough for this to be effective.
	Silver paint was added to enchance details like the grill, exhausts, roof lights, horns, and fuel tank.		I staged some gas cylinders on the bed to see how it looked, and that is when I decided it needed a stake bed.
	Some more coffee stirrers were sacrificed to make the stake bed, floral wire extended the exhaust stacks, and I muddied up the tires with khaki paint.		Some resin castings (or prints) from Scale-Rails to load up the bed with something rustic. The tail lights are just thin sections of sprue painted silver with an overpaint of red glow-in-the-dark paint. The bed and stakes got a wash of thinned grey paint, with a mix of very thin black paint to bring out the wood grain.

Firetruck Refurbishing
	When I was maybe 10 years old, I assembled an AHM firehouse with ladder trucks. I am not sure where the firehouse is, but somehow, I managed to keep the trucks. As they are intended as hook and ladder trucks, they are pretty long, but I don't need two. Again, the Internet proved to be an inspiration. Someone else shortened one up and put different details on it, and I was motivated to do something similar. Only one got modified--into a hose truck--and the one that still had its ladders simply got a new paint job and some minor cleaning.		First, cut a section of the truck out....a square to the body as possible.
	Reassemble the shortened body. I added some wood inside the body as well as the outside to help strengthen the truck and make a "bed" for the hoses to be stored.		A piece of sprue and some old telephone wire became a hose reel that sits near the front of the truck bed.
	More telephone wire got used to create folded hoses down the length the of the bed. Full length pieces of wire wire make the top row of hoses.		The back of the truck just has several "U"-shaped pieces of wire to fill in the blank area between the top row of hoses and the closed part of the bed.
	Painting the hoses a khaki color gives them the right look. The large hydrant hookup hoses are lengths of sprue with a bit of tape wrapped around the ends to simulate the hose connectors.		To finish things off, I found a spare steering wheel and made a spotlamp from floral wire and another bit of sprue. It is a lot more detailed than the original model, and even though it isn't "superdetailed", it does make a better impression than its original form.