Peter Jackson speaks to Patrick Munford – known as The Model Bus Doctor on social media – to find out more about his business and how his custom creations take shape
Patrick Munford has been making waves in the coach and bus modelling scene of late, having decided to take his passion from part-time hobby to full-time job. Keen to find out where that passion came from, I asked how he’d got into coaches and buses in the first place. “My grandad was a coach driver for 50-odd years, and I used to go out with him on day trips, on scheduled services and private hires – I looked up to him since I was little,” he said.
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“He drove for various companies; Mulley’s, Beestons, Headingham, Felix of Long Melford – he had a varied career. I got the chance to ride on a lot of vehicles during that time – some real oddballs. There was a Mercedes-Benz with an North West Coach Sales Buffalo coach body, nicknamed Buffalo Mk. III. That was with Felix, and it was a 75-seater. I nearly bought it for preservation, but it’d been scrapped before I could find out where it was.”
Talking of preservation, Patrick is no stranger to owning classic vehicles. “I’ve owned a Leyland Leopard with a Plaxton Supreme IV coach body, and the unique Volvo B10L Saffle low-floor-bodied bus, L456 JCK. I had to sell both as it was too much to look after them on my own,” he admitted. “I had the space at a local railway to store them, it was just too much expense to own them.”
The next step
“I’ve been doing the resprays as a hobby for eight years, but I decided at the beginning of this year to look into turning it into a business,” Patrick explained. “I’d left a previous job that I wasn’t happy in and had another job to go to, but due to Covid it fell through. I used to brush paint them originally, but they looked absolutely horrible! I then started spraying them, which looked horrible at first too so I sent them away to get re-done. But I slowly built up my skills, and got to a point where I had people asking me to do loads of stuff for them, including operators.”
Already, Patrick has caught the attention of numerous well-known operators, producing custom models for them as well as individual clients. These operators include Kings of Colchester, Don’s of Dunmow, Heathside Travel of Dorset, Bates of Tiverton, Golden Boy, Paul S. Winson, Stanley Travel, and Lynx of Kings Lynn. He posts the results of his hard work on Twitter and Facebook, helping to drum up business and show potential customers what’s possible.
Recently, his work even led to an opportunity with FirstGroup. “One of the people I use to produce the decals for my models asked First for all of some information to help them produce the decals accurately,” said Patrick. “First was interested in the fact that I was producing models, and they wanted to have photos of all of the models I’d produced so far. Luckily, I managed to get one of the ones I’d sold back from the customer, but the others had gone abroad!”
What’s involved
Explaining the process involved in creating each model, Patrick said: “I ask the client to source the base model, because if I sourced them and they decided they didn’t want it any more, then I’d be out of pocket. Occasionally I purchase models myself to do up and sell on however. I also ask for a non-refundable deposit up front, which is to book their space to have the model done.
“I speak to the companies whose vehicles I’m replicating; for example, I recently spoke to King’s of Colchester to ask them for the paint code of their vehicles. They wanted to see a prototype when I first completed that. I took it over to them, and they loved it that much that they ordered 28 of them. That’s my biggest order to-date. They shared images of them on social media and they sold all of them; at least two ended up in Cyprus, I believe.” That’s not the furthest-flung of Patrick’s models though, as one even ended up in Australia!
Generally, operators are pretty supportive of Patrick’s work; even though they can’t always share the artwork with him for the liveries, they often help with colour codes, reference images and fonts. “I ask for pictures of the vehicles at the front, back and sides to help me recreate the livery, and usually they supply them,” said Patrick. “My friend in Lancashire then recreates the livery artwork and sends it off to be printed and cut into decals.”
Once he has the base model in his hands, Patrick’s first step is to take all of the plastic parts out, like bumpers, glazing and roof linings. “The model is put into some paint stripper which takes all of the original paint off,” he said. “Then I clean it with a wire brush to tidy up the grilles that are ‘embossed’ into the casting, give the whole model a light key and apply a primer.
“I then leave it to try fully before applying a white primer; the plastics get primed in plastic primer, which is a completely different colour to the diecast primer, so I have to then go over the whole thing with white primer to make sure it’s all one shade when the colour goes on. Each coat of the colour is left to dry for a few days, which allows the paint to fully harden. Once I’ve painted the main colour, I mask up where I want the black around the windows etc, and spray the black. Once that’s done, it’s just a case of applying the decals and reassembling the vehicle. The decals are water slide transfers, and they have a natural shine to them already.”
Put to the test
I asked Patrick which livery he’d found most difficult to re-create in miniature. “The new East Yorkshire livery is the hardest I’ve done so far,” he said. “I’ve done quite a few models with that livery now, and the trickiest of them all is either an Enviro200 or the Beachcomber open-top Gemini dual-door. As the dual door was part of the casting, I had to work out a way of making sure the paint didn’t bleed over onto them.”
In terms of costs, the price of a completed model varies considerably depending on the cost of the base model and the paint needed. “For example, for the new East Yorkshire livery, just the colours cost £100,” said Patrick. “The paint is usually at least £20 per can. So, I can’t really say because it varies so much. The Kings ones were around £65 each though – because they ordered quite a few, I could spread the cost out.”
Patrick currently has a lot of work on: “I’m doing Transdev’s Cityzap, Witchway and generic Pride of the North liveries – they’re all Enviro400s though. I’ve got another for Lynx of Kings Lynn, some Heathside Irizars and a Go North East X-Lines Citaro. I’m definitely busy! I’m going up to Newcastle soon to collect another six models to repaint for Stanley Travel.”
It’s not the first time Go North East has asked Patrick to re-create one of its vehicles: “They commissioned a model last year for a driver as a memorabilia vehicle,” he said. “It was all hush-hush and kept off social media until it’d been passed over, as it was a surprise gift.”
In terms of the future, Patrick is going to see how it goes and take things one step at a time: “I play it by ear. As long as people keep coming to me for models, I’m happy,” he concluded.
