Tom Fort
Edinburg, Texas
Tom built this 1/24 scale diorama for the Museum of South Texas History in Edinburg, “to show that smuggling from Mexico through South Texas … didn’t start recently,” he says. Tom set the scene “somewhere south of San Antonio, late 1932,” he says. “Burro trains from across the Rio Grande would rendezvous with autos at remote spots, where crates of Mexican beer and other ‘liquid refreshment’ would be unloaded and put into the cars for fast trips north to San Antonio, Dallas, and elsewhere.” The cars are an AMT/Ertl 1927 Model T and a Franklin Mint diecast 1933 Ford Deluxe Tudor. Preiser provided the burro and beer crates. Tom planted assorted dried plants from a crafts store and got the prickly pear cactus from Plastruct. He made his own wire fence and a cross-buck pack saddle for the burro.