About 4-5 years ago I picked up this replica cast iron steamroller toy for about $12. I gave it a quicky coat of paint and put it out in the garden. It looked OK from 10 feet away. Now that I’m indoors it’s right at the front edge of the layout, and it looked a lot like… a rusty toy.
I found a couple pics of Huber steamrollers in a book to work from and decided to see if I couldn’t improve it. First to go was the cast in cylinder detail. I replaced that with one made from styrene, brass and wood. Then I filled in the cast detail on the sides of the head tank & bunkers, made a roof vent, fabricated a proper Huber style front roll frame, and painted it. I put a steering wheel on it, even though all Huber rollers had power steering because it’s more visually interesting than another lever.
I almost left it that way, then I decided it wouldn’t be that hard to remove the front canopy supports and make proper ones. I also added the bracing to the head tank. Then I striped it and “weathered” it with primer paints.
It’s still not a “scale model”, but I think I can live with it.
