Starport Terrain - Vehicles

I've been collecting bits and pieces to expand my terrain collection for a while now, with a view to creating some Starport terrain - a couple of landing pads, various scrap piles, shipping containers, loaded pallets, various different vehicles, plus parts of the town that has sprung up around it, that will link into the rest of my post-apoc terrain. I also have plans to retrofit some of my post-apoc terrain, specifically the caravans - I want to change them from being supposedly abandoned into being shops and homes. 


These are the first new pieces I've done for the Starport in a little while - forklift trucks for loading the ships. 

This the the first completed - I wanted them to be dirty and rather rusty - the world they're being used on is a border planet, on the edges of civilisation, so the equipment would need to be very robust and able to withstand the rigours they'd be put through.

This here is the second forklift - similar, right? They were painted together, along with a third vehicle (see the next blogpost in a day or so) in order to make them look like they belong to the same company. I wanted them to look quite uniform amongst the piles of refuse and broken pallets.

This guy is here to give you an idea of scale - he's from the em4 Miniatures (Mark Copplestone-sculpted) range and is one of the basic Troopers from a squad of soldiers I'm putting together. Looks quite large, but it has been manufactured for use by humans and non-humans - booster seats are available...

This is what the forklifts looked like when I bought them - they were two for £3 from Wilkinsons.

Finally, this is what they looked like before they were undercoated - I took them apart (which was simply a matter of undoing two screws), sanded/shaved off any symbols and writing, removed any moldlines, keyed the surface of the whole vehicle so it would better take acrylic paint. Once this was done I put the vehicle back together, filling the screw holes with model filler, supergluing certain parts that were quite loose and adding filler to simulate areas in which rust had built up. I also ended up replacing the bar that joins the forks together, as it was quite flimsy. 


Very happy with these and the other vehicle - I recently received some pallets in the post, so I will be modelling some crates and fuel cans to go on those. I also have plans for an anti-aircraft gun mounted on the back of a civillian truck as a sort of added security for the fledgling Starport...