An unusual day at WMD HQ it being the birthday for both my departed sister and mother in law but one where we did have a get together of families over a meal which was nice. No model making activities today but time to reflect on a model I built around the time my sister died.
This is the Airfix JCB kit. Well it is not quiet the Airfix kit as it is now under the ownership of Dapol but more on that later in this post.
Even though I built this kit years ago it is not, in true Woody style, finished yet! It needs the various rams painting silver, the decals applying and some weathering. Despite its small size it is a fairly detailed kit and the rear actor is movable.
At the moment the model stands in the quarry at Chalkdon, my 009 narrow gauge layout, where it will probably now stay.
There is some history to this kit. Originally released in 1966 by Airfix, the JCB was actually the load for a lowmac wagon kit so the JCB was never available seperately. Go forward about 25 years and Airfix had stopped production of their railway based kits, including the old Kitmaster range they had bought, back in the 1970s. Dapol however bought all the moulds from Airfix in the 1990s. They started to re-release the old kits but they had a major fire in their factory in Wales shortly after and a number of moulds were lost in the damage including, it was thought, the JCB moulds. Roll forward many months and the story goes that Dapol got a phone call from a local engineering works who carried out repairs to moulds. They wondered when Dapol were coming to pick up the repaired JCB moulds? Apparently before the fire the moulds had been sent for repair but nobody remembered that! Since then the kit has been released on its own and is still in the range.
Sometimes it is good to look back and remember things and not just models but those close to you.
