…For old trucks are a little expensive to buy, especially when you don’t really need originals.
On a project we are working on at the moment, one of the tiny, but important, aspects is some old 1930’s lorry tail lights. The style isn’t important, but they need to look ‘appropriate’ to the untrained eye. Something like this:
It is funny how, given the main business of transport happens at the back end of a lorry, it is really difficult to find period photos (or contemporary ones come to that) of the back end of a lorry! Lots of front, front three-quarters, side, and rear three-quarters photos but a detailed rear view is rare.
A little guess work and artistic licence was required so a raid on my ‘hoard of stuff that should have been thrown away a long time ago’ was needed. I found some damaged Land Rover Defender tail light bases that were of no practical use, and some new spare lenses. I swapped the new lenses for the old ones on the back of my trailer, to save weathering, giving a pair of suitable non-functional tail lights. However, tail lights need a bracket to fit to.
Further hunting in the ‘rubbish saved for a rainy day’ pile produced a bit of plastic cut from an old recycling box used by St Nicholas Fields in York. That was ideal providing something black that looks like a steel bracket, complete with a folded lip on the top edge.
Holes were drilled and the shape cut out with a saw for the straight cuts, but for the curved sections a car boot find of a pair of curve cutting tin snips proved to be just the job!
The lights fitted perfectly and already look aged. They will be installed tomorrow.
