Model Mania — Ron Styan’s truck collection

Model Mania with Bob Riley explores nine builds from Toowoomba modeller Ron Styan’s collection.

Model Mania with Bob Riley. Original ACT archive column; no individual photographer is identified in the retained pages.

On ACT’s Model Mania pages this issue we take a look at the hobby work of octogenarian truck modeller, Ron Styan of Toowoomba. He has been building model trucks on and off for close to 50 years.

Bird Strike

When he opened the box of Italeri’s Stralis kit just a couple of years ago, Ron found the clear windscreen was cracked from top to bottom in about the middle of the wide screen. Unable to effectively repair it without turning it into a “glue-bomb”, Ron went for a novel solution. He searched his local ‘$2-shop’ and found a set of stickers featuring various birds. He found one that was a good size and got stuck into it with a pair of sharp hobby scissors until the sticker looked like the sad outcome of the ‘bird-that-struck’. The rest of the Stralis was built straight from the box before it was finished in Dupli-Color ‘vivid yellow’ with a selection of waterslide kit decals added to it.

European Rover

Italeri’s Kit No. 3861 with the 1/24 scale DAF XF 105, the container trailer and two by 20 foot containers, depicts a rig from the Windrose Transport fleet. The decals suggest the company operates all over western Europe, typically through the major ports of Antwerp, Hamburg, Genoa, Marseille and Le Havre. The DAF has been built straight from the box and has been finished in an overall light blue. The cream/white roof is almost a “signature” feature of Ron’s truck models as it appears on many of them.

Style Tip

Ron’s heavyweight dump truck is a straight from the box build of Italeri’s 1/24 scale Freightliner Kit, Number 3783. The striking paint design was created simply because Ron said he was finishing off several Dupli-Color spray cans and that was about as far as the bright apple green covered.

Prime Fuso Mover

The 1/24 Fuso FVH-214JR is the prime mover from the two-in-one Mitsuwa kit that also featured a bogie axle two deck car carrier. Ron built the truck model largely straight from the box but modified the exhaust system so it ran twin high rise stacks up behind the cab. The car trailer, which is normally coupled to the Fuso, carries four late 1950s – early 1960s US cars and a vintage 1928 Citroen. The truck has been spray painted in white with a gold skirt and a light blue chassis while the large diamond tread patterned rear deck plate has been finished in a rust brown.

Renault Magic

Seen on our roads as the Mack Magnum, the 1/24 scale model truck kit that Italeri released, is of the Renault Magnum. Built straight from the box, Ron finished the Renault with a white roof. The cab was painted in nitrate metallic, a Holden colour from Holt’s, while the lower bodywork was spray finished in a silver blue.

Fire Engine Red

Ron actually finished his straight from the box build of the 1/24 scale Italeri LA Fire Department Western Star Recovery Truck, Kit Number 3843, in a Ford red. The white body stripe came from the kit supplied decal while the white cab roof, the upper half of the doors and the white on the sleeper box, were Ron’s own design.

Popular Pete

The US-based Central States Trucking’s Peterbilt 359 prime mover is a straight from the box build of AMT’s ever popular 1/25 scale kit. Ron finished the model in Dupli-Color spray can ‘glacier white’, added a kit-supplied red and green main body stripe and finished the lower body and front mudguards in a spray can brown to tone with the red and green stripe. Ron commented that the model was close to being 20 years old.

Fresh Cargo

The 1/25 6×2 Ford Louisville van is based on AMT’s Short Hauler kit. Ron added a lazy axle from his ‘spare parts’ box, converted the cab to right hand drive, and re-sheeted both sides of the van body with plain sheet plastic to give the van smooth sides. It allowed him to cut the wheel arches for the bogie rear wheel set-up. He spray painted the truck in a two-tone silver blue and white scheme and added a colour-copied part of a 1/24 scale trailer kit decal to create the imaginative sign-writing. Ron commented that the Louisville rigid was at least 10 years old.

To The Rescue

Revell’s 1/24 scale Mercedes Benz Unimog U 1300 L ‘THW’, Kit Number 07401, was built straight-from-the-box. ‘THW’ is the German agency for Technical Relief, a government non-profit organisation, not unlike the SES and other search and rescue and disaster relief organisations in Australia. Ron built the Unimog straight from the box and finished it in Holts Dupli-Color deep aqua.

Rear Vision: where are they now?

Have you built similar models or have an update on Ron’s collection? Tell ACT what happened next. We will verify current updates before adding them to the archive.