I'm sure many of you have seen the NIKE missile "Scale Rail" Don has posted on the forum several times. His fine model inspired me to make one of my own, but, with a slightly humorous twist.
The flat car is a Lionel PS-4 with wood decking. The crates are from Frenchman River Model Works and are made from resin. The missile and launcher are from Revell. Decals are homemade and from the kit. The crate stencil lettering is from Archer Fine Transfers.
The flat car deck and crates were weathered with Micro-Mark "Age-It Easy". I was very pleased at the way they turned out. I was surprised that the resin crates took the stain so well. When I made my own decals, I had included stenciling for the crates, however, I was not pleased at the decal's tenacity to curl up on the edges and had trouble getting them to lay down. It made for a sloppy slight, so, I removed the decals and went for Archer's dry transfers. These gave a much better appearance, but, they were not the easiest things to install. Needless to say, my homemade decal and dry transfer skills need some more practice.
The launcher kit has several hydraulic pistons. Most of these pistons have a clevis that only had two dimples inside the clevis to slip onto the pivot point. These looked to me like they would wear out and cause problems pretty easily. Everywhere I thought the clevis weal, I drilled out the clevis and attached them with either a set of 1-72, 0-80 or 00-90 hex head bolts, washers and nuts. The mechanism now works worry free. I wrapped the pistons with "Bare Metal Foil" to give them a much shinier look than silver paint. I was also pleased with that result. I used the kit's standard decals for signage and to letter the launcher. The launcher is bolted down to the car by 0-80 hex bolts, washers & nuts through the inside of the front and rear pads. The crates were drilled, threaded and bolted down from underneath by 0-80 hex head bolts.
Normal lettering for the missile just wasn't going to do. What better than "The Road Runner" & "Wile E. Coyote" to grace the flanks of the NIKE missile. Along with "ACME ARMS" supplying the wares, everything just fell into place. Here I used a combination of homemade decals and kit decals. Wile E. Coyote rides his own firework missile, on the booster rocket, chasing The Road Runner, with lightening bolts trailing, on the warhead missile, across the skies. Off course, he'll never catch him. It was perfect that the one of the kit's shield decals had "A A" for ACME ARMS on it.
Since the model's rocket nozzles were not made into a cone, I painted the inside red to represent foreign object covers for the nozzles.
