Loch Lomond Rail Tanker (The Black Island)

The Black Island (French: L’Île noire) is the seventh volume of The Adventures of Tintin, the comics series by Belgian cartoonist Hergé. Commissioned by the conservative Belgian newspaper Le Vingtième Siècle for its children’s supplement Le Petit Vingtième, it was serialised weekly from April to November 1937. The story tells of young Belgian reporter Tintin and his dog Snowy, who travel to England in pursuit of a gang of counterfeiters. Framed for theft and hunted by detectives Thomson and Thompson, Tintin follows the criminals to Scotland, discovering their lair on the Black Island.

 

– courtesy of Wikipedia

The finished model:

The story:

So, as I’ve said before, I have nothing much to say about The Black Island. I like it. It’s not my favourite adventure, but it’s far from my least favourite (and of course I don’t really dislike any of the stories). In fact, The Black Island is probably right smack dab in the middle of the preference list for me.

Of course since Hergé sent his assistant Bob De Moor to Britain in October 1961 on a research trip to update the album for the then-upcoming first publication, it’s got almost endless possibilities for scale model building.

You see, in the early 1960s when Hergé’s English language publishers, Methuen, planned on translating and publishing The Black Island for the British market, they requested updates to 131 “errors” that they felt would be noticed by the English audience – to easy task!

Since Hergé was busy producing latest (and 22^nd) Tintin story, Flight 714 to Sydney, it was up to his assistant Bob De Moor to research contemporary (1960s) British society and culture. When he returned, Bob De Moor, along with assistants, Roger Leloup and Jacques Martin set about giving The Black Island a facelift. Over the next four years, Leloup redrew the many aircraft and Martin updated even more of the cars that appear in the story. But one of the biggest noticeable differences were the trains. All the old steam engines were replaced by their electric cousins, and a tanker car featuring a (free) advert for the real-world Johnnie Walker whisky was replaced by one for Captain Haddock’s preferred (albeit fictional) drink of choice – Loch Lomond whisky.

It’s a pretty memorable scene, with Tintin and Snowy, hot in pursuit of the criminal mastermind, Dr. Müller. He seems to have given them the slip by uncoupling Tintin’s carriage from the rest of the train and forcing our hero to continue the chase on foot. However, just like a hobo’s dream, that giant, bright yellow tanker with its blessed cargo rolls into view and Tintin and Snowy ride the rails in style thanks to a small leak.

So, even though there are plenty of other modelling subjects on offer in The Black Island, I just couldn’t resist adding a rail tanker to my Tintin project. It also didn’t hurt that there’s a commercially available kit to work from.

The build:

Of course, although there is a long out-of-print Airfix kit of a “OO gauge” Esso tanker, it’s not exactly on the shelf. I knew I could probably snag one off eBay eventually, so I set up a watch and started comparing prices. As luck would have it though, during a trip to Singapore, I wandered in to Hobby Bounties and stumbled across the Dapol re-bagging of this venerable kit.  Peter at Morgan Hobbycraft & Hobby Bounties is an old-school and very knowledgeable Airfix fan and when I mention the Esso tanker as one of the items on my list, he casually directed me to a huge box of Dapol bags, saying “well, it’s not Esso, but…”

I didn’t bother explaining that the BP decals didn’t matter, because I was going to a Loch Lomond look. 😉

Since I was basically planning a straight build with some enhancements rather than a large surgical process, I didn’t think it would be too difficult. However, right out of the bag though the project threw me a bit of a curve ball. The directions, such as they are, are explanatory rather than visually demonstrative. Meaning instead of a nice picture of two pieces, it just tells you “glue the brake cylinders to the undercarriage”, which, of course, assumes you know what a brake cylinder looks like. It also had several optional parts for wheels and connections, depending on what you’re planning to do with it.

Anyway, with a bit of trial and error, I did get it all put together. The fit in a few places was a bit suspect, and I did have to plug a few unneeded holes (some of which came with the kit and some I created while trying to better align the parts). For some reason though, I had a really hard time to cover up the patched holes. I thought I’d putty and sanded them into submission, but I could still see the tell-tale shadow marks. Once I finally did get them to disappear, blending the paint was a bit more difficult than it should have been, I think that I might’ve put on a few coats that were too thick and remained a bit gelatinous under the top coat’s skin.

Given the complexity of the undercarriage, I also had to decide to loosen my grip on my airbrush and get some paint brushing done. It actually was less painful and with a better result, than I’d expected. Maybe I won’t be so hesitant next time.

All things considered, I’m quite pleased with the result. The tanker is right at the limit of what I can squeeze onto my standard Tintin base though. I even had to turn it diagonally to squeeze out every bit of space.

*update: As you can see from the final pics, I ultimately decided that the “standard” base was too small.  So, after using a different one for my Tintin Lunar Tank, I decided to retrofit this one with the same base style. It looks a lot less crowded now!

Well, feel free to tell me what you think.