REPORT BY MAT IRVINE
Italeri is a kit company that besides making a wide variety of cars, trucks, ships, aircraft and military, also produces many accessory and diorama kits.
One brand-new release is this 1:24 scale ‘Guard rail and road section for display’, a diorama base intended for trucks or other road vehicles.
What’s in the box?
You get two identical runners, each with a section of road surface, guard rails and a STOP sign. Decals provide relevant highway markings, and each runner has 25 parts, so you get 50 in all, plus the decal sheet. The road sections are 229 mm (9 in) wide by 187 mm (7.4 in) long - so making up both gives you a display base nearly 380 mm (15 in) in length, plenty big enough for the average 1:24 scale truck. If you want to display a full-length tractor-trailer combo though, you'll best add a second kit to give it more space. As the box detail indicates, the kit is suitable for European and US trucks, but could be adapted easily to make it suitable for virtually any country.
Crash barrier
You can build the crash barriers ‘high’ or ‘low’, and build either version as a single section, or use both to double the length. You can also extend the road ad infinitum, though you have to buy additional kits for this. As Italeri puts it, ‘Modular kit. Buy additional boxes to extend your road.’
Left- or right-hand highway?
The kit is intended for countries that drive on the right, but for those that drive on the left, the kit can be converted by the simple expedient of reversing the whole lot left to right, while fixing the STOP sign and decal to the other end of the road. The octagonal sign will need swivelling 180 degrees, and a new hole drilled for its post, and instead of your model vehicle facing left, it will face to the right.
Wide geographical choice
The fact that the kit’s STOP signs, on the pole and on the road, say just that - ‘STOP’ - is fortunate. Many countries use the same word, so the kit can represent virtually anywhere in Europe, North America and Australasia, though you’d have to hand-paint an ideogram for places like China or Iran. There’s an interesting selection of STOP signs here.
Sign origin
Incidentally, the octagonal stop sign was a US invention, first used in 1915. Besides road junctions, it also appears on US school buses as a fold-out ‘flag’ to indicate traffic must come to a halt from either direction when children are getting on or off the bus.
Summation
A useful accessory kit that will set off a 1:24 scale truck very well indeed.
Thanks to The Hobby Company for the review kit.
Italeri trucks, trailers and accessory kits available here.