Kenworth Container Freighter

I was sorting through one of my bins of parts and came across the rocker cover to a Renwal Visible V-8 engine. I thought it would make a cool freighter part, what with the raised lines going lengthwise. Pity I had to cover most of them up because they were uneven.

A pair of printer arm thingies neatly separated the rocker cover from the engine box AND added support for the cylinder leading forward. I could have put a series of cargo pods forward from the engine box but another part that seemed to fit perfectly, angling in and up, was a bird feeder. I had used once before beneath the JDINER-Class Fighter. I connected the bird feeder - Let's call it "belly" - To the engine block with a cylinder just slightly smaller in diameter than the belly itself. Coincidentally, the right sized cylinder connected the cargo pods to the main ship, leaving me the option of having these permanently attached to the rest of the freighter.

The inward sides of the pods weren't going to be very visible so I didn't feel much need to spend a lot of detail on them. The blue parts were plastic clothspins. I was feeling lazy detailing the outside of the pods so I added large "corrugated" plastic sheets to be giant doors, thus establishing the convention for the smaller cargo doors on the back of the main ship.

Painting was another example of playing catchup to poor planning. The ideal painting method would have been "drybrush", just like on last year's Assault Lander, because it's an easy way to simulate a variety of colors, some painted on, some scraped-off. But, I found a paint color I liked and just ran it through the airbrush. Oh, well. The cargo pods, though, got painted not-a-permanent-part-of-the-ship yellow, thus making them container pods. Orange dry-brushing on the bottom and around the hatches is supposed to be rust.

Here's where things got serrendipitous. Keeping the main fuselage blue would have been boring so I postulated a gray bow to help dissipate heat on atmospheric entry. I didn't want to paint the whole part a different color from the rest of the ship so I left a half inch of blue around the top.

Decals: I wanted something like a freightliner but the only truck kits I had ever bought were the tractor parts, so that's the only truck decals I had. I had to postulate "JP Systems" freightline with some racecar decals. The bow... Further postulating a freighter owner-driver instead of a captain, such that some decorative personalizations could be tolerated, so instead of custom mudflaps, I allowed shark jaws on the bow. The really cool part? The blue part above the gray which, with little shark eye decals, emphasized the shark nose.

Decals, lastly: HO scale grafitti. Get the lasercut ones!

Kenworth Container Freighter, JP Systems Freightline