Hi there. If anyone has ever seen the movie Duel I’m sure you remember the creepy truck that chased poor Dennis Weaver all over the California Dessert. I am a sucker for old movies like that as well as Smokey & the Bandit, Christine, etc.
Anyhow I have a number of friends that are into Model railroading and I have seen many cool little cars and trucks. I sold some stuff to the LHS and had some credit. While I was looking I saw these cool little N-Scale trucks. It reminded me of the movie Duel instantly. I thought to myself that would be a neat addition to someones layout. Especially if they are a fan of the movie or just like the classics.
I plan to use the existing semi (Modify the body and grill to match) and scratch build most of the trailer. I have been playing around with casting and plan to cast copies in resin. I also plan to make an HO scale one so my friend (owner of a LHS) can use it on his in-store layout but I’ll save that for another time.
The Idea is to glue two pipes together and fill in the top, bottom and insides. I will cut it to length and round the front and back. I will then add the skirting around the wheels.
VI. Both pipes glued together
VII. Pipes next to the truck
VIII. Chassis part attached to the bottom
XI. Hooked up to the Semi
X. Filling in the top.
For ease of use I will probably fill the insides of the pipes w/ resin. Putty would take too long to cure.
Here is the skirting being added. I added two stabilizers. Getting the skirting to be identical and all symmetrical was very difficult due to the ridiculous small size!
Here some progress on the cab of the truck. I had to change the grill because the lines are going the wrong way for what I want the truck to represent (Old Peterbilt 281/351). They need to be going sideways.
I removed the grill, took the lights off, and sanded down the front of the grill. I then lined up strip styrene and fused them together with solvent glue. Next I placed and glued the series of lines on the grill and trimmed around the existing grill base. While doing this I trimmed out a tiny block for the AC unit on the rear of the cab. That will be placed on later.
XIX. Tiny strips that will make up the grill.
XX. AC unit and the finished grill.
XXI. Grill and lights back on the cab. Notice I had to lower the top of the frame in the rear. The trailer was riding too high in the front so this fixed the issue.
XXII. Filled in the bottom of the trailer. Caused sink holes on the sides of the skirting. Will fill those in when the center is dry.
A bit more here… The AC unit I mentioned earlier is to be put on. Funny fact about that unit in the movie… They did use units like this but very rarely. It was nicknamed by truckers “Swap Coolers” and they used a block of ice placed in the unit. Air would flow around it and back into the cab. The reason it was used on this truck was to hide a camera for rear shots.
XXIII. Swamp Cooler on the rear truck
XXIV. Cooler on the cab
XXV. Current stance.
XXVI. Rear current stance. Will fill the sink holes on the side soon (putty inside is still drying).
Hi again! More progress. I added the smoke stack. I also have worked on the trailer some more. The trailer progress cant really be seen right now. I filled the bottom voids with super glue so it can be casted without undercuts. Its drying currently but I’ll show a pic of that too later. After priming I can see the sides of the trailer skirting will need a bit more smoothing and that will happen after a little more drying time. Oh and not sure I mentioned it earlier but the cab lights have been sanded off (the movie truck has none). Thanks for looking!
XXVII. Trailer after priming (will need a tad bit more filling and smoothing)
XXVIII. Semi next to a N-scale car I found. Its not a valiant but very close to the shape. Plus at N-scale its hard to tell anyway.
