AMT Peterbilt 359 and (formerly) Three-Axle Trailer

I am not, by and large, a competent builder of 1/24th scale truck kits. I'm so incompetent I'm not sure if they're 1/24th scale or 1/25th scale! I find them to be a lot of work and I'm not good with the cab interiors; it seems that no matter what I do or how hard I try, I end up messing up the windows.

But here's AMT's old Peterbilt 359 and a reissue of the old three-axle gravel trailer. Of particular note is that the three-axle gravel trailer has only two axles. Three-axle trailers, while not unknown in Arizona, are somewhat uncommon, and I thought it would look a little cramped and congested what with all those axles on the road. So I simply cut off one axle, about the easiest modification to a truck kit I've ever made. Otherwise, the trailer was built out of the box, and painted for the most part with Krylon semi-gloss black and Krylon aluminum. I rubbed a little flat tan paint on the tires, let it set for about ten minutes, then rubbed most of it off with a paper towel dampened with mineral spirits - my usual technique for dealing with truck tires. The wheels got heavy washes of black paint to represent brake dust and general road grime.

The tractor (as we rather snootily refer to such things) was given to me as payment for building a friend a different model. It remained in storage for a long time, as in years, before I finally got around to building it. Amazingly enough, I hadn't lost any parts. It's painted OSHA "safety red" and semi-gloss white, and I added the hydraulic parts from the dump trailer. The air lines are solder that I wound around a paintbrush handle and painted blue and red, while the hydraulic lines are black plastic tubing that I'm pretty sure came from a Tamiya motorcycle kit. I didn't have any glad hands so I just drilled holes in the trailer and stuffed the lines in, hoping that nobody would notice. I also hope that nobody notices that it doesn't have a green electrical connection.

I made the door decals by fiddling around in Microsoft Word and printing the logo on a plain old laser printer. It's a little too thick to really look like a vinyl door sticker, but it's not bad. I didn't weather the tractor except for the tan paint on the tires trick.