Bedford O Type - finished

It’s been a while since I updated this blog, for two reasons: 1) in the autumn I moved home, so there was a break in my modelling activities, and 2) the project I undertook between moving and Christmas was to build a Christmas present for my dad – and I didn’t post any updates in case he saw them!

My dad worked on a farm in the 1960s, and before that he spent much of his time amongst  local farm workers and relatives who worked on the land, as did many people in southern Lincolnshire. It’s no surprise that he retains an affection for the tractors and lorries that featured on the farms of the day, and I was sure he would like a model of a typical farm lorry. He drove some lorries himself, but sadly no models of those types have been made. However, he has always been fond of the Bedford O type, a typical 1940s – 1950s light lorry, and kit makers Emhar make a kit of that very vehicle.

The kit was only released in the mid-2000s and as such, is modern in design and very high quality. All parts are moulded in light grey – the preference of most modellers- and are crisp and clean. My only criticism is that some smaller parts are held onto the sprue/frame with very thick gates (joining points), sometimes making it hard to remove the parts without damaging them. Aside from that, I cannot fault the quality of the parts. Even the numerous lugs which form the hinges for the tailboard and dropsides are provided as separate parts, and as a result look great on the model.

 

The kit features a detailed engine (a 3.5 litre petrol engine in a truck, those were the days!) and the bonnet and bonnet sides all allow for the engine to be on display, if you wish. I don’t go for the open-bonnet look usually, unless the engine is something spectacular, so I built and simply painted the engine and left the engine compartment closed. The most awkward part of final assembly was the grill and front wings: with the wings attached as per the instructions, I found there was too little space to fit the grill,  so had to file away some of the lower grill surround. This also affected the fit of the bonnet sides, but overall that lovely Bedford ‘face’ still looks right.

When it came to assembling the rear body, I added the tailboard, side pillars and headboard and decided that was enough – it looked like the kind of farm lorry I wanted to make. I tried fitting the dropsides later to see how they looked but found that they needed to be assembled together with the other body parts in order to fit well, so I happily left them off.

The Bedford was sprayed using easily available aerosol cans: Humbrol red for the cab and body, Humbrol satin black for the chassis, and Plasti-Kote gloss black for the wings. The kit is intended to be made as either a British Railways or British Road Services lorry, which wasn’t quite what I wanted, so naturally I chose not to spray the model in either colour scheme or use the respective decals. Paint is of course only the first step in finishing a model, and I complimented the paint job with some subtle washes to bring out the details, and some dry weathering powders – especially on the ‘wooden’ load bed –to suggest accumulated earthy dirt.

Overall I would recommend the Emhar Bedford to anybody with a soft spot for old lorries.