This picture shows the production version of this model

Photograph © Mark Smith

MODEL REVIEW BY MARK SMITH

The traditional and very attractive livery of Isle of Man Transport certainly makes an attractive model.  Issued (initially at least) to subscribers of the Corgi Collector’s Club as their 2004 club model.  The model comes with an unnumbered certificate, Corgi literature stating a run of 1000 models.  The casting depicts IOMT DAF DE02PSDB250/East Lancs Lowlander No.55.  Fortunately the OOC casting is dimensionally most accurate when depicted as a DAF with lowheight version of the body, and this helps with the ‘look’ of the model enormously.

The dark red and cream livery is replicated very well, the rich shades are well applied with the narrow mid deck stripe and the very narrow black beading strip inserts correctly depicted, very nice renditions of the Bright-Tec destination screens front and rear (correctly there is no side display), accurate fleet names and numbers, crest and DAF/ELC badging.  The rear lower deck window and nearside rear engine door are depicted by tampo printing, although the corresponding detail on the offside, including the large radiator grille, fuel filler, emergency door black surround, handle and lettering were ‘missing’ on my model.  Correct style etched wipers and tree bar complete the ensemble.

Internally the blue plastic interior mouldings have been sprayed black in the cab area and present a more realistic appearance in this area.  Corgi continues to issue these models with overly wide printing representing the window pillars, which does detract slightly.  In contrast to the early livery issues such as the Ipswich Buses version, Corgi have used black printing in the vicinity of the cab side windows and entrance doors to reduce the impact of the inaccuracies of the casting in these areas.  This enhances the appearance considerably.

Overall, it is nice to see a decent model of a most attractive prototype, in my opinion probably the best rendition on the Myllennium casting to date.  It will be interesting to see how many of these models make it onto the open market in due course, as certain other so-called ‘subscriber only’ editions appear to have been made more widely available recently.

This page last updated Thursday, 28 May 2020