For the last few months I’ve been working on the Saracen Mk.2 Armoured Personnel Carrier as well as building up my stock for The International N Gauge Show in Leamington Spa the weekend after this on 12th & 13th September.
It’s taken quite a time to get this model done as there are a multitude of angles on the vehicle. It fact it was probably not far off a modern “stealth” vehicle. What this means is that you have to be very careful in getting the angles right. Just one or two thousandths of an inch out and it will completely spoil the model.
This isn’t a brilliant photo, but it shows the rear plate, which was one big problem. You can just about see that there are what look like exhaust pipes running up the hull rear on either side. These are in fact crew air extraction rather than engine exhaust pipes. They are too small to be made as separate parts, so I attached them to the rear plate. My first mould came out with the upper hull fouling on these air exhausts, which meant that it would not sit up against the rear plate. So, parts adjusted and second mould made.
In the photo above, the casting from the second mould is on the right. I had used the wheels from the Stalwart (but with new suspension arms) as being as close as I could get, but they weren’t quite right. I had the model with me at the Avon IPMS model show in early August and showed it to my friend Tim Neate, who has done some articles on the Saracen in the MAFVA magazine Tankette. He liked the look of the model, but felt that the wheels were too big. He thought that the wheels from the Bedford MK/MJ may be nearer the right size. I had a week off the Saracen to get some more casting/re-stocking done and had another look at it the following week. I found the original wheel that I had used for the Bedford MK/MJ, which was slightly smaller, but square in profile. So I went over the wheel with a small scalpel blade and opened up each of the tread marks, and then rounded off the squareness. This wheel is just 20 thou less in diameter/ 1o thou in radius, but is now far nearer the right size. The end result is the casting to the left from mould No.3. Thanks again to Tim for his helpful advice. It was/is much appreciated.
I haven’t got the time to take my usual black & white and colour photos for my P G Models website, so I won’t release this model on the website until after The N Gauge Show. However, I am building up a stock of them and will have them for sale at the show. I’ve now got to draw up a side view of the vehicle and an exploded diagram of the parts to show what goes where, and then to put them into a Word document with arrows and text. There’s just over a week to go before the show, so it should be just about enough time to do it.
P.G. Models
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