Royal Navy Tugmaster Flight Deck Tractor

Brengun, 1/48 scale

Reviewed by David Couche

This Royal Navy 1960s Heavy Flight Deck Tractor Model, known as Tugmaster, was derived from an industrial / airport tow vehicle.

It first saw service with the Royal Navy in 1960 on HMS Victorious (R38) but was swiftly phased out late in the decade and replaced with a new purpose-built 4WD tractor.

Firstly the kit comes in small top opening box. Upon opening you are met with 2 bags of very nicely cast resin parts.

Now for a detailed look at the kit. The first thing you notice is that you have 2 large pieces of resin that is the major body front and back. The parts are cleanly cast and are quite boxy… no make that very square in shape. Just need to be cut from the casting blocks and glued together.

Next you will come to 3 sets of wheels, cast in pairs. You have the front wheels with hub detail inside and out, and 2 sets of rear wheels. One set is the inner dual wheel with only detail for the inner sides and an outer set with exterior hub detail. The block like tread is well represented and the hub detail with wheel nuts beautifully represented should paint up and detail well. One the block with the front wheels is the large air filter as well.

There are 2 blocks of smaller parts. The first has the seat parts, exhausts and steering wheel. This last part will take some careful cleaning up as there is internal flash and it is very finely cast and may break easily. The second block has a number of towing lugs etc that are placed in a number of locations around the vehicle.

You also have a sheet of photo-etched with 20 parts, some large, like the front guard which covers the whole width of the tractor and protects the radiator as well as the drivers.

It also has the dash, driver’s pedals, side guard and several grab handles.

Brengun have given us detailed assembly instructions, a very small set of decals, but there were little markings used on these vehicles, and minimal generic paint colour call outs, but again, it is a very basic paint scheme of overall orange-yellow.

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The decals themselves appear to be in good register and well printed.

The only scheme is for a tractor from HMS Victorious in 1964.

This is a very neat kit and will certainly add a bit of deck interest if you’re building Royal Navy aircraft of the 1960’s. It is a fairly simple and straight forward build and shouldn’t give, you the modeller, much grief. Well recommended as a story telling add-on to your RN builds.

Thanks to Brengun for the review sample.

Review Text and Images Copyright © 2020 by David Couche
Page Created 15 June, 2020
Last updated 17 June, 2020

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