Garbage Truck

To populate the streets on my layout I am constantly looking for interesting vehicles and figures to create unique scenes.

One such vehicle is a garbage or refuse truck, to collect all the garbage bins placed along the sidewalk. A few modern models of garbage trucks exist, but I need a model that suits my 1940's era.
I searched the internet for appropriate pictures and probably would need to scratch-build one.

ClassicRefuseTrucks.com has a wealth of vintage pictures from the 1930's until the 1960's.
The truck above is equipped with a Leach garbage Loader.
 

The smaller rear bucket loader garbage trucks above would be right for smaller communities and I will try to scratchbuild one of these. (A Heil Collecto truck at left and a Leach at right)

Then on ebay I was fortunate to find a couple of resin bodies that I could mount on an existing truck chassis.

THE RAIL CONNECTION offers several resin bodies and trucks.

I choose one of my flatbed truck models from Classic Metal Works to accept the garbage body.

I removed the flat bed by inserting a small screwdriver between the bed and the chassis and popped the deck off. It is actually glued at several spots.

The rear axle and wheels are wider than the garbage body so I needed to add fenders. I salvaged two rear fenders from a Con-Cor Steam Era 1930's Ford Truck kit.
 

I drilled a small hole (#76 ??) in the side of the fenders to accept a piece of .019" brass wire.

Then I also drilled the same size hole in the side of the body where the fenders would be.

As you can see, the resin body casting is not very clean and has a lot of small holes that came from trapped air bubbles during the casting process. I tried to fill some but as the truck will not be too close to the layout edge they will not be visible after painting.

I test fitted the body on the chassis, to check if the fenders would well cover the wheels. Then I glued them to the resin body with a few drops of CA.

Then I applied a coat of grey primer from a Tamyia spray bottle.

After the primer had dried I brush painted the body with Vallejo Alluminium paint. I didn't feel the need to fire up my airbrush because the Vallejo paints cover well even with a brush.

Finally I glued the garbage body to the chassis with a few drops of contact cement.

Soon later the city workers were busy collecting the garbage bins.
I will apply a decent weathering to the truck and body and keep on checking for appropriate lettering for the garbage truck.

Stay tuned for more special vehicles to be added soon.