Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea!

Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea! The final line of that fantastic film, the original 1972 and in my view best, Italian Job and if you want to reacquaint yourself with that final line in the final scene, you can see it here.. 

What that line has to do with this blog may appear somewhat strange but let me explain. Tuesday saw me at the Rocks by Rail Museum where the task for the day was a continuation of digging ballast out from between the track so that it could be cleaned. The work that day would see the end to that section of line. Having pick axed and shovelled my way through several tons of the stuff over the past few visits I was pleased that this would be the last day for a while anyway! Preparing my back for a session with the pick axe it was suddenly that Michael Caine moment when someone said - Hang on a minute, lads. I've got a great idea! Unlike Mr. Caine who had no idea what to do, this idea was actually a good one but unfortunately somewhat late in the overall job. Instead of using the pick axe, why didn't we use the Kango? A Kango is a sort of electric pneumatic drill and makes jobs a lot less back breaking! Great idea and it worked well and would have saved so much effort on all the other days when we did not use it! Doh and even double Doh! Anyway by lunchtime we had finished. Unfortunately I had to go home to take delivery of Mrs W's Christmas present (if she is reading this I trust that has bought me some bonus points!) so I missed out on the afternoons work of putting some clean ballast back which involved moving locomotives and ballast wagons. Oh well! There will be other times!

The Kango arrives!

Nearly done.

Back at WMD HQ the Man Cave AKA The Room of Gloom had a bit of a clean and tidy up today as it was getting somewhat reminiscent of a waste receiving depot. I tend to work in a mess on my things and much as I try to change it just does not work for me to be tidy model making. Strangely, and much to Mrs W's annoyance, if I am cooking, things get put away as soon as finished with and dirty utensils washed as soon as used, usually whilst Mrs. W still actually has a need for them hence her annoyance! Whilst tidying I came across the K5350 Mustang truck and I thought I really do need to finish it. So this evening it has reappeared on the workbench. All that remains is for the cab to be weathered and a few parts including the glazing attached. The first thing I did was to find the windscreen and mask out the area that the windscreen wipers would clean. In general you don't see even the most dirty vehicle with a windscreen that at least shows evidence of the wipers having been used. A piece of masking tape, a compass cutter and a bit of measuring saw the mask cut and in place.

Here the winscreen has been covered with a piece of masking tape.

The compass cutters are simply a compass with the pencil replaced with a cutting blade - very handy for cutting circles! The mask is in place and I had to amend the bottom as it is that long since I did one of these I forgot that the bottom off the wiper arc would be flat and not curved as I first cut it - Doh!

 Next up was to commence the weathering of the cab. Just like the cargo body and chassis the weathering starts with washed of dilute greys and brown paints. As I said in a previous post it is like watching paint dry waiting for the washed to do their thing. However given the way I do models it may be weeks before I come back to this again!