Thomas
Bennett
Goodwater, Alabama
“Way down
on the levee, in old Alabam-y” … well,
actually, Thomas didn’t wait on the Robert E. Lee, diving into Lindberg’s 1/163
scale kit to make several improvements. He used styrene ladder stock to create
missing windows and a door, and pulled some spare parts to build a wheel shaft and
jackstaff missing from his kit. Other parts that were too big for scale were
left off. Then he went shopping for N scale figures, perusing the Scenic
Accents line for 19th-century figures. “About one third of these (98) figures
needed little or no modification,” Thomas says. “I used train personnel, cut
the baggage out of their hands, and used them for boat personnel. I had to give
almost all the women dresses by using glue and tissue and shaping the dresses
with a toothpick. Painting vests on a lot of the men did the trick.” Scenic
Accents also provided deck furniture, but he had to improvise wood casks: “I
did find 55-gallon steel drums,” he says. “I used my motor tool to round off
the edges and finished them with two black rings to get the look I wanted.”