Ever wondered if you could add 'real-life' transport companies' vehicles to your layout without spending a fortune on the likes of Herpa and Wiking …? Read on !

Make a visit to your local Toys-R-Us store, and you will find one of the makes on the ‘toy-car’ shelves is "Fastlane". Their range covers just about every road-going vehicle, including truck/trailers. Even better …many of these are to ho-scale, costing £ 1.99. The majority will be US-styled articulated trucks, but do delve into the shelves, as you will find Euro-styled truck/trailers too. I have so far managed to find them in 4 colour schemes … white, red, blue and black. They come with fictitious company liveries, on stickers which are easily removed from the sides.

All you need to do now is surf the web for your favourite transport companies and copy the colour schemes and logos. Using a package such as PowerPoint, you can created truck/trailer sidepanels with 'real-life' (or near to) logos and colour-schemes, to scale. Once printed onto good quality paper (I use high-resolution bubble-jet paper), all that is left to do is to cut them out (preferably using a sharp hobby-knife), liberally apply 'pritt-stick' and affix to the "Fastlane" models. You could take it one step further and repaint the cabs too, to match the colour-schemes exactly.
Finally, the containers are also easily disassembled from the truck/trailers (held together by one small screw), which means with for example the Vos-Logistics colourscheme you can create your own Vos/ACTS container freight train by placing the containers on a flat-goods wagon behind a Lima 1200 Vos/ACTS.

Finally, good luck and here are the details …
Make : Fastlane.
Available : All Toys-r-Us superstores.
Barcode : 4000341592.
Price: £ 1.99 for truck/trailer.
Pritt-stick : £ 0.50 for 200ml at Wilkinsons Stores (own-brand and cheapest I've found so far).